


Popular Problems

by Kat_of_a_Different_Color



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, I really hate Joffrey y'all, Joffrey Baratheon is His Own Warning, Joffrey isn't as bad as in canon here, Jon and Cella should have been siblings, Modern Westeros, Muffins, Olenna is a plotter, Physical Abuse, Sansa likes all the lemon things, but mostly because he doesn't have the power, good sibling relationships, he's still a dick though, lady deserved better, so it's like the second year of Autumn or something, so she's not dying in this, the seasons thing in Westeros is still a thing here, um so I hate having to tag for the following... but:, which turns into
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2019-08-26 10:59:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 46,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16680355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat_of_a_Different_Color/pseuds/Kat_of_a_Different_Color
Summary: Sansa Stark has been lowkey not-quite in love with her older (and favorite) brother's best friend for years. Myrcella Baratheon has been in love with her best friend's older (and favorite) brother practically since they met. The boys in question are normally not quite so unobservant as to miss these facts, but, well, theyarerather emotionally invested, being absolutely mad for the two girls as they are.Enter Joffrey Baratheon, Myrcella's older brother, and we have a recipe for some serious problems.





	1. i'm lacing up my shoes

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Leonard Cohen album of the same name.  
> All of the chapter titles will be attributed in the end notes.

Sansa comes downstairs to the sound of her mum saying, “Now, Robb, you’ll take care of your sister?”

“Of course, Mum,” Robb replies, sounding almost offended that their mother would think he could do anything but take care of her. “Jon, you too, yeah?”

“Of course, Aunt Cat,” Jon repeats, sounding very serious.

“I don’t need either of you taking care of me,” she grumbles as she walks into the kitchen, stalking across the room for the teapot; Mum has already mixed up her mug just the way she likes it by the time Sansa reaches her. “I can take care of myself, you know.” She turns around to see Robb and Jon exchanging a meaningful glance. “I can!”

“Of course you can, sweetheart,” Mum says, though her tone is placating, and Sansa doesn’t believe a word of it. “Do you want a muffin, Sansa?”

“Sure,” she sighs, making a face even though she loves Mum’s baking. “Oh, are they lemon poppyseed?” she gasps when Mum holds one out to her. Mum smiles and pulls her into a side hug.

“Just for you, sweetheart,” she says. Sansa’s love of all things lemon is well-known, having been established when she was very young - younger than she can really remember, to be honest. 

Smiling now, Sansa pulls Mum into a tight hug before taking a large bite of her muffin. “Thanks, Mum,” she says with a grin.

“There’s some of those in your lunch, too,” Mum tells her. “And some of those little cheeses you like.”

“You’re the best, Mum!” Sansa all but sings, practically skipping from the room, her mother’s conversation with Robb completely forgotten. 

“Arya! Bran! Rickon!” Mum calls up the stairs after her as she runs back upstairs for her backpack.

All three of her younger siblings are sitting at the kitchen counter when she gets back downstairs, backpack slung over one shoulder. “Ugh, you’re wearing makeup,” Arya groans, as if it’s a mortal sin to want to look nice for the first day of school. Sansa narrows her eyes at her sister but says nothing, just turning away and rolling her eyes instead.

“You’re sure you’re fine going with Robb and Jon?” Mum asks, setting a hand on Sansa’s shoulder.

“I’m sure, Mum,” she says. In all honesty, she’s been looking forward to this all summer. In all honesty, she’s been looking forward to this since Robb got his car, towards the beginning of when she was still in eighth grade.

“All right,” Mum says with a kiss to the back of Sansa’s head. “Your hair looks lovely, sweetheart.”

“Coming, wolflet?” Robb calls from the door, one hand on Jon’s shoulder.

She bounds over to them, too excited to worry about appearing overeager, and grins up at her brother. “Of course, Robb,” she says sweetly. As they walk out to the car together, Robb’s arm thrown around her shoulders, she tilts her head sideways to look up at him. “This year is going to be amazing,” she says with confidence. (She’s learned that saying things like they are already true helps them to become so, like the way she tells herself she’ll wake up to her alarm clock, even though she’s always been a night owl, for as long as she can remember.)

“It absolutely will, wolflet,” Robb agrees, kissing the side of her head, where she has her hair pulled back into two Dutch braids that merge into a single braid at the nape of her neck. The long braid curls around the side of her neck, and its end falls below her breasts. It’s longer than anyone else’s hair that she knows, so she’s sure her hairstyle will stand out today.

She’s always braided her hair, for as long as she can remember. Mum did it when she was little, and she learned to braid on Arya, who hated sitting still for it - she’s had a pixie cut since the end of grade school - so switching to braiding her own hair was almost easier than doing her wiggly little sister’s. For the last three years, she’s been getting into more and more complex braiding styles, until over the summer she learned about Ancient Valyrian hairstyling - on YouTube, because apparently there’s such a thing as a hairstyling archaeologist, and she posts how-to videos - which she can’t do on herself, as it requires sewing the hair in place. She’s tried out several styles on Mum and Aunt Lya, but neither of them has returned the favor. Maybe she can convince Mum to do one of the beautiful, complex styles for a school dance?

“Hey, where’d you go, wolflet?” Robb asks, looking at her in the rearview mirror as he drives down their - very - long driveway, toward the gates that open automatically at his approach.

“Oh, I was just thinking about the Ancient Valyrian stuff that I was learning over the summer,” she says, exchanging a quick glance with Jon as Robb pulls out onto the street. Robb doesn’t know that what she learned over the summer was about braiding; he thinks she became interested in history overnight. Jon, on the other hand, found her watching one of the videos over the summer.  
She doesn’t know how long he watched her before she noticed him, but he was stifling laughter when she did. She’d paused the video, glaring at him. “ _What_?” she’d asked, feeling prickly at the thought of him laughing at her.

“ _You were making these little-_ ” Jon had gestured to her hands, which she realized had been mimicking the motions from the screen. “ _What are you watching_?” he’d asked, actually sounding interested, though still highly amused.

“ _Ancient Valyrian hairdressing,_ ” she’d admitted, ready for him to burst out laughing and call her a silly little girl. But he didn’t. He’d asked her more about it, even watching the whole video from the start with her, just to see what she was so interested in. It hadn’t helped her get over the stupid crush she’s had on him forever, not one bit, because every time they had spoken for the rest of the summer, her insides cried out, see, he likes you! He wants to know about things you like! And when Robb had thought she was talking about history, she hadn’t corrected him, wondering a little bit if Jon would give it away.

Only he didn’t. He’d just shrugged and asked Robb about their favorite sports team, distracting him. Robb had teased her about a newfound interest in history for weeks, until Jon had said, “ _So what if she likes history? It’ll help her with her classes._ ” It wouldn’t, but Robb wasn’t to know that. And he had stopped teasing her about it after that.

“OK, what on earth was it that you learned about, wolflet?” Robb demands as he turns right. “I’ve never seen you this interested in history, unless it was about princess stories.”

“I’m interested in family history, too,” she says innocently, thinking back to all the times she’d asked Dad about their ancestor Bran the Builder, who built the original Winterfell. Their house - more of a mansion, really - is half the stones and structure of the old Winterfell and half new construction - and about a quarter the size of the original building, which really was more like a castle. 

Robb huffs a sigh. “Yeah, but…”

“So it’s not possible for me to be interested in history?” she demands, sounding offended. Jon turns his head to look back at her, and she winks at him, hardly believing her daring. “Robb, that’s just mean.”

His shoulders slump. “Sorry, wolflet. Of course you can be interested in history - it just surprised me, is all.” He sounds so contrite that she can’t help breaking into laughter. “What? What’s so funny?” Robb demands.

“She was messing with you, man,” Jon snorts.

Robb sighs and gives her a look via the rearview that has her sinking back into her seat for the rest of the ride.

“Thanks, Robby,” she says when they get out of the car, stretching up and hugging him tightly. They’ve always been close, despite their age difference, and though she practically considered Jon another brother when she was little, the birth of Bran - her real brother - made her reconsider that idea. Since then, she’s been not exactly guarded, but certainly a little more distant with him than she is with Robb. So Robb is as close to her as he is to Jon, though in vastly different ways.

“Sansa!” she hears from the front steps of the school. Her head snaps around - as does Robb’s, she notes with not a little amusement - and she grins widely, waving madly at her best friend.

“Cella!” she cries back, throwing caution to the winds and running pell-mell across the parking lot. She hasn’t seen her best friend all summer - even though their fathers are friends, Cella’s mother hates both of Sansa’s parents, especially her mother. Sansa has no idea why, and frankly she’d rather not learn. It’s sure to be something boring from when they were all kids. But she doesn’t let Cella come over to Winterfell, and she’s kept Cella either insanely busy or away in the Westerlands for the whole summer.

“Sansa, watch out!” Robb shouts from behind her as she pelts towards Cella. She pulls back immediately, and avoids getting hit by someone’s huge pickup truck by approximately a hair. Adrenaline floods her veins, and she gasps, pressing a hand to her chest, where her heart feels like it’s going to beat right out of her ribcage.

“Oh my Gods, Sansa, are you OK?” Cella cries, her own hands covering her mouth.

Still gasping a bit, Sansa lets herself be pulled into Robb’s arms. “She’ll be all right, Myrcella,” her brother says, holding her tight, rubbing a hand between her shoulderblades.

“Yeah, I’m just a bit… shaken up,” she says, pulling back from Robb with a rueful look, looking both ways very deliberately before crossing to Cella and throwing her arms around the other girl. “I’m fine, Cella,” she says, because as soon as she’s in her best friend’s arms - as soon as she’s been hugged by both Robb and Cella, her two favorite people in the world - it’s true.

“Are you sure, Sans?” Cella asks, holding a hand to Sansa’s cheek as she pulls back from their hug, one arm still around her waist. “It would be all right if you weren’t fine - I mean, you just almost got hit by a car!” Cella lets out a little hysterical laugh that turns into a sob halfway through. Sansa just pulls Cella back in for another hug, knowing that it is what will comfort, will calm her best friend the best right now.

“Hey, Myrcella,” Robb says from behind them, a hand on Sansa’s back, sliding around her shoulders and squeezing her to his side for a quick moment when she and Cella part again.

“Hey, Robb,” says, shoulders still shaking a little.

Sansa elbows her brother. “Just hug her, you idiot!” she hisses just as Jon reaches them, face white and furious.

He pulls her away from Robb and Cella, who have awkwardly slid into a hug that both are relaxing into more and more as the seconds pass. His eyes burn down into hers for a long moment before he growls, “What on earth were you thinking, Sansa? Running across a parking lot? You could have died!” He is all but shouting at the end, hands on her shoulders, squeezing so tightly that she thinks they may go numb.

“Whoa,” Robb says, approaching them with his hands out in front of him. “Man, what’s going on?”

“Your sister is an idiot, that’s what’s going on,” Jon snaps, fingers biting into her shoulders even more.

Robb and Cella exchange a glance. “She’s fine, Jon,” Robb says softly, oblivious to the way Sansa’s breath has completely left her. Is that what Jon really thinks of her? That she’s an idiot?

She brings her hands up between his arms and snaps them both out to the sides, breaking his hold on her shoulders. Whirling around, she lets herself be pulled, shaking slightly, into Cella’s arms and walked up the steps to the front of the school. People are staring, she knows, but for the first time in years, she doesn’t care. “You’ll be fine,” Cella whispers into her ear. “He didn’t mean it, Sansa.”

“Yes he did,” she says tonelessly, as they walk to their first class together, Westerosi History. “He meant it. He thinks I’m just a stupid little girl.”

“He does not,” Cella insists, though when Sansa shoots her a hard look, she subsides. “OK, Sansa. Are you excited for History?”

Sansa snorts, starts giggling, and ends up laughing so hard that she has to wrap her arms around her belly.

“What did I say?” Cella asks, looking between Sansa and Robb, who is walking up to them with Jon. “What’s so funny?”

“History-” Sansa gasps out, looking up at Jon, who is no longer scowling at her; his lips, curled into a tiny smile, twitch before he, too, snorts.

“What is it about history?” Robb demands again, looking between them. “What’s so funny, guys?” Rolling his eyes when neither will answer him, he says to Cella, “They’ve been doing this for half the summer.”

“Oh, have they?” Cella says, looking with renewed interest at Sansa and Jon. “Come on, Sans, spill. What’s so funny?”

Still getting her breath back, letting out little snorts every few seconds, Sansa smirks. “I’ll tell you when we get to class.”

“Oh, come on!” Robb complains, making a betrayed face. “Why can’t I know?”

“Because it’s too funny to watch you be so confused about it,” she replies, lips twitching as she glances quickly at Jon, who is smirking behind Robb’s back. “And we need to get to class now, Robby. I want to get good seats.”

“OK, wolflet,” Robb sighs. “Where are we meeting for lunch?”

Sansa rolls her eyes. They already went over this at home; why does he need to ask her again? “The statue of Visenya, by the library.”

“Good. I’ll see you then, Sans.” Robb takes her face between his hands and presses a long kiss to her forehead. “Do great things, wolflet.” It’s what he’s always said to her instead of goodbye, and she has no idea where he got it - but she loves it all the same.

“Have the best day, Robby,” she says in reply. “First day of your senior year!”

“Gah, don’t remind me,” Robb groans, turning to leave. 

“Wait!” Cella exclaims. “Let me take a picture of you two - finally at the same school for the first time in years!” She waggles her fingers at Sansa, who hands over her phone without a word.

“I’ll text them to you, Robby,” Sansa promises. “Just do it; she won’t stop complaining at me all day if you don’t.” She knows Robb is hardly likely to refuse anyways - he’s been absolutely goofy about Cella since they were kids - but she wants to make sure. She holds out a hand, grinning when he takes it, pulling him to her side. They stand in the light-filled hallway, grinning first at each other, then at Cella.

“Hey, let’s get another with Jon,” Robb suggests. “Jon, get over here! You know you’re an honorary Stark.”

Jon sighs but acquiesces, coming around to stand beside Robb, but Cella shakes her head. “No, stand on Sansa’s other side, Jon. It’ll balance the pictures better.” Making a face, Jon comes to stand beside her, sliding an arm around her waist, like the way Robb’s arm holds her shoulders. Only it’s completely different, because it’s not Robb. It’s Jon. She shivers a little at the thrill that goes up and down her spine from the place Jon’s arm touches it. “Perfect,” she hears Cella murmur, and she can’t help but agree. “OK, all done,” Cella says.

“No, no, not all done!” Sansa rebuts. “Robby, take pictures of me and Cella.”

“Don’t you have to get to class?” Robb mutters, already taking the phone from Cella, who bounds towards Sansa and slides an arm around her waist. Hugging her back, Sansa grins, feeling like she can finally relax a little in her best friend’s arms. 

“Thanks so so so much Robby!” Sansa says brightly, taking her phone back from Robb as she and Cella all but skip off together, down the hall to their first-period class.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from 'Slow'  
> (So the Ancient Valyrian hairstyling thing is based on this Ancient Roman hairstyling archaeologist I discovered over the summer. Her name is Janet Stephens, and you really should look her up on YouTube. The tutorials are _amazing_ ; I got to try them out on my sister, and the results were stunning.)  
> Here's the first chapter! I'm going to try to post a chapter every week (it's nice to have goals), but I am in Nursing school, so that may not always happen? I really will try my best, though.  
> I'd love to hear (well, read) what you thought of this! (But there's no need to feel guilty about _not_ leaving a comment. I have pretty bad depression, and even though I would like to comment on everything I read, most of the time I don't have the energy for it.) (It's also fine to not leave a comment for whatever other reason you have for not leaving one.) (Can you tell that I have anxiety, too?)  
> I really would love to hear any thoughts on this, though - it's my first work in this fandom, as well as the first thing I've ever posted on AO3.


	2. my oh my oh my...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> some misunderstandings about muffins

Lunch finds Sansa and Cella standing at the statue of Visenya, waiting for Robb and Jon to show up, for ten minutes before Sansa rolls her eyes. “Let’s just sit down and eat,” she grumbles to Cella, who makes a face and follows her towards the nearest table, which has half the seats open.

“Ugh, _boys_ ,” Cella complains, squeezing Sansa’s hand. It’s a comfort, knowing that her best friend knows how disappointed and hurt she is by Robb breaking a promise to her, even a little one like meeting for lunch. 

“Whatever,” she mutters, opening up her lunchbag, a new teal one that coordinates with her backpack, which is gray with teal accents. “Want a lemon poppyseed muffin? Mum made them this morning for breakfast.”

“Oh, I love your mum,” Cella says as she takes the proffered muffin. “Everything she makes is just _so goo_ -” Her words are cut off by her biting into the muffin and groaning in appreciation. “Gods, these are amazing, Sans.”

“They really were,” Robb agrees, sitting down at Sansa’s side, kissing the side of her head, though she tilts it away from him.

“Oh, are we suddenly worth joining for lunch now?” she snaps at her brother, whose shoulders slump.

“Sorry, Sansa,” he says. “Jon got into a bit of… trouble at the end of class, and I wanted to make sure Mr. Thorne would treat him OK. You know how biased he is against Jon.”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “But you couldn’t even text me, Robby? I was _worried_.”

Wrapping both arms around her, setting his chin on her shoulder, giving her his best puppy-dog eyes, Robb says, “I’m so so sorry, Sansa. I didn’t think; I was just mad that Jon was getting in trouble and not the other guy.”

She frowns, turning to look at Jon. “What other guy? What happened?”

“Don’t worry about-” Jon starts, shutting up when Sansa glares at him. “Fine. It was Waymar Royce - he was saying horrible things about the two of you to his lab partner, who was laughing about it.” His jaw works; he still looks pretty furious, Sansa notices.

“What was he saying?” Cella asks softly, setting a hand on Jon’s clenched fist. “Please tell us.”

Jon looks at Robb, who frowns. “Suffice to say, Royce is the one who should have gotten in trouble. It- honestly, it’s not stuff I want to repeat - not things that should be said about any girl, not just the two of you, and not just ‘cause they’re seniors and you two are freshmen.”

“OK, Robby,” Sansa sighs, tilting her temple into his forehead. “You’re forgiven.”

“What about Jon?” Robb asks, chin still on her shoulder. “He’s the one who defended your honor; I just defended him from an unfair teacher.”

Sansa purses her lips. “Fine, you’re forgiven, too, Jon,” she finally sighs. “For being late.”

“I _am_ sorry, Sansa,” he tells her. “And I’m sorry for yelling at you this morning, too. I was just- I was so worried, and when you were fine… I’m sorry.”

Nodding, looking down at her lunch, then over at Jon, who has the most contrite, puppy-dog expression on his face, she says, “All right. You’re forgiven for that, too.”

Jon’s shoulders relax, though she hadn’t even realized that they were tense. “Can I have a bite of your muffin?” he asks hopefully, raising his eyebrows playfully, widening his eyes. 

She’s let him have some of whatever dessert Mum gave her that he’d already eaten a large portion of but still wanted more of before - lots of times over the summer, when she’d be having breakfast at the kitchen counter after waking up late, eating leftover banana or zucchini bread. So she’s surprised when, as she’s about to agree, Robb snaps, “Jon! Don’t even _think_ about it!” sounding angry at his best friend. To even further surprise, Jon turns bright red and ducks his head, looking at the table.

“What?” Sansa says looking at Robb. “I’ve let him have some of my muffins before, Robby.”

Robb chokes on his carrot stick and gapes at her. “Uh-”

“Yeah, over the summer,” Sansa says. “And banana bread, and zucchini bread, and I think one time it was brioche, right, Jon?” She looks to her brother’s best friend for agreement, but he is still staring, bright red, at the table. She thinks he’s even redder than before.

“Oh,” Robb says, sounding relieved for some reason, though she has no idea what it is.

“Here you go, Jon,” Sansa says sweetly, breaking off a piece of her muffin and handing it to him - or attempting too, anyways, since he won’t look at her or take the muffin piece. Frowning in annoyance at his behavior, she sets the piece of muffin down in front of him and turns back to her own lunch. “Honestly, you two,” she says, looking at her brother and Jon in turn, “I don’t know what’s up with you today.” 

The rest of lunch is a quiet, vaguely awkward affair, and Sansa is glad when it’s over - though not glad to have to say goodbye to Cella, who has Drawing and Painting rather than Choir, where Sansa is headed.

Choir is boring, just a basic set of icebreaker exercises and some voice warm-ups that the choir director wants them to practice every night. It seems a bit much, but she supposes that’s just part of being in the high school choir, rather than middle school. When it’s over, she just has Textiles left, again with Cella. Thanking the gods that she and Cella have such coordinating schedules, she walks into the classroom and grins to see Cella saving her a seat.

They’ve both been excited to have Septa Mordane as a sewing teacher for most of middle school; she’s rumored to be strict, but a very good teacher.

The last bell of the day rings, and the girls jump up from their seats, glad they only have a worksheet from their Algebra class - it’s not tons of homework for the first day. Saying goodbye in the parking lot is tough, but Cella is pulled away by her older brother, Joffrey, who Sansa has thought was handsome pretty much forever, a match to Cella’s spun-gold locks and jade-green eyes, although he was mean to Cella when they were children. She hasn’t said anything bad about him recently, though, so presumably that’s stopped. Besides, Robb wasn’t a perfect angel when they were little, either. 

The car ride home is quiet, too; Jon and Robb both still seem occupied by whatever it was at lunch that made Robb so angry at Jon. She’s still confused about that, by the way - what on earth ticked Robb off about Jon asking for some of her dessert?

“Hey, mum!” Robb calls when they get inside. “That smells really good!”

Sansa’s perked up, though - that smell means Mum made lemon tarts for her, in addition to this morning’s muffins. “Is it all right with you if Jon has some of the _tarts_ , Robb?” she asks as they walk into the kitchen, a little snidely. She’s still miffed about Robb getting so upset and then not telling her what it was. 

“ _Sansa_ ,” he grumbles. “That’s not what it was about.”

“Well then, what _was_ it about, Robb?” she demands. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you snap at Jon like that, or seen Jon that red. Seriously, what was it?”

“ _You’re_ the one that twisted it around,” Jon mutters as he passes Robb. “ _I_ was actually talking about the muffin.”

Mum looks both concerned and amused. “All right, my darlings,” she says, “what happened?”

Sansa throws up her hands. “At lunch, Robb got really upset when Jon asked for some of the muffin I had in my lunch - I gave the other one to Cella, who loved it.”

“We have to get that girl over for dinner one day,” Mum mutters. “Although if what you’ve told me is right, she wouldn’t want to leave, and we’d probably get accused of kidnapping by her mother.”

Snorting, Sansa replies, “Yeah, but if you got her dad to agree to it, it’d be fine,” with a sunny smile. “And there’s no way Dad _couldn’t_ convince him.”

Mum chuckles, but turns to Robb. “What upset you, darling?” she asks.

“It- that’s not- it was the _way_ he said it!” Robb stutters, looking angry again.

“Darling, it doesn’t sound like anyone meant any harm,” Mum points out gently. “Let it go, all right? It’s not right for you and Jon to be upset with each other.”

Sansa smirks, feeling just a little triumphant, and glances at Jon, who’s looking at her and blushing again, though nothing close to as red as he was at lunch. “I’m gonna go change, Mum,” she says, eager to be out of her skinny jeans and back in something comfy.

“These should be just about cool enough to eat by the time you get back down,” Mum says with a smile for her.

Running up the stairs, she hears the start of Mum talking to Robb and Jon, but doesn’t really pay attention to what she’s saying. Her skinny jeans are the first thing to come off, and she’s pulling on a comfy, warm pair of yoga leggings - it’s already chilly; winter is certainly well on its way, though it’s always a little cool in the North - just moments later. What else to wear… the top she has on now is cute, but her shoulders hurt, and while it’s definitely partly her backpack’s fault, her bra is probably contributing to the problem at least a little. So she should change into a sports bra, and while she has some cute ones, none of them would look right with the strappy top she wore today (under a cardigan, of course - she doesn’t want to freeze). So she should probably pull on a sweater. She doesn’t have all that many that aren’t from middle-school things, though, and she’s in high school now. She can’t wear those.

So she decides to dig around in Robb’s room for a hoodie or something. It’s kind of a mess, but Jon did sleep over last night, so it’s not all Robb’s mess, at least. Finding a Winter Town Direwolves half-zip fleece, she decides that will work - mostly unzipped, of course, to be just a little scandalous, but not too much. It smells really nice, she notes as she zips back to her room and pulls on her favorite sports bra - a sparkly dark gray one that has nice wide straps over the shoulders but becomes really strappy in the back.

Hurrying back downstairs - searching Robb’s room took longer than she thought - she zips into the kitchen and makes grabby hands at the tarts. Mum slides three onto a plate and hands it to her, so she takes it over to the counter, slipping into the seat beside Jon. “Hey,” she says, bumping his shoulder with her own.

“Hey, Sansa,” he replies, turning to look at her for a second - and then pausing, looking her carefully up and down. “Hey, is that my fleece?”  
Freezing with a bite of tart in her mouth, Sansa thinks about it. It’s possible; Jon’s stuff and Robb’s stuff had no clear distinctions that she saw. “Maybe?” she says. “I got it from Robb’s room. Is it OK for me to wear it?”

“Sure,” Jon says, just as Robb says, “Hell no.”

She turns around to glare at her brother. “Um, why do _you_ care?” she asks, knowing that she sounds kind of bitchy but not really caring at the moment. Robb’s been weird about Jon all day, and it’s been bothering her for as long as it’s been happening. She thought Mum had talked to them and they’d fixed it, but apparently not.

“It’s- it’s not-” Robb sputters, turning red. “It’s not appropriate!”

“Why?” she asks. “Jon said it’s fine, so it’s not really up to you, is it?”

Robb narrows his eyes at Jon, who shrugs and makes an innocent face. “I don’t know what’s up with you, man,” he says, making Robb narrow his eyes even further.

“Boys, stop it,” Mum says as she hands a plate to Robb and sets three more tarts on Sansa’s plate, tilting her head to Jon in a gesture that may be attempting to be subtle.

Sansa slides the plate over to Jon. “Maybe it’s OK if you take one from the plate, instead of me just handing you a piece?” she says, firmly ignoring the way Robb has now narrowed his eyes on her. “What do you think?” she asks Jon, all but batting her lashes as she turns towards him. Now she’s just doing this to get a rise out of Robb, who is making [sputtering?] noises in the background. Jon, though, looks a bit dumbfounded, and Sansa ducks her head, looking down at the counter, feeling her cheeks flush. Of course - she’d forgotten that Jon thinks she’s just a stupid little girl. There’s no way he wants a stupid little girl not-quite-flirting with him.

“Thanks,” Jon says quietly, after clearing his throat twice, as if the first time didn’t work well enough. “These are really good, Aunt Cat.”

“Thanks, darling,” Mum says, smiling kindly at Jon.

After their delicious snack, Sansa grabs her backpack and walks into the dining room, sitting in her usual spot and pulling her folders and notebooks from her backpack, stacking them in front of her. She has Algebra II homework, a short getting-to-know-you sheet to fill out for her history teacher, and a few other short things, but she does them all easily and quickly, finishing far faster than Robb and Jon, who both have several math problems and a research thing for their own history class. 

Going back up to her room, she flops onto her bed and texts Cella: _Ugh, Robb’s still freaking out at Jon_

The response comes back within the minute: _Seriously? What’s going on in his head? I couldn’t figure out what it was, and I thought about it for all of drawing and painting_

_Sansa:_

_Yeah, I have no idea…_

_How’s Tommen?_

_Myrcella:_

_Good_

_First day of middle school without me…_

_I_ _think he’ll live, though ;)_

_Lol_

_Did Joffrey say anything to your mother about the near-miss this morning?_

_Not yet…_

_It’s still early, though_

_He’s been out all afternoon_

_Do we want to know what he’s up to?_

_I doubt it_

_Mother harped at me a bit when I got home about you being my friend_

_Not that I care_

_What I care about is why Jon Snow was yelling at you?_

_I don’t get it_

_No, me neither_

_I changed into some yoga pants and a sweater when I got home, but I went_  
_to borrow a sweater from Robby and accidentally picked up one that turned_  
_out to be Jon’s_

_Oops_

_Yeah_

_Robb flipped out again_

_He said it was ‘inappropriate’_

_Um_

_What._

_How?_

_Exactly_

_I don’t know_

_Sometimes your brother is just so…_

_Much of an idiot?_

_Yeah_

_Believe me, I know_

_I’m the one that has to live with this nonsense_

_At least Jon is going back to his house after dinner tonight_

_I don’t think I could stand much more of the weird looks he keeps giving me_

_Like annoyed… but not really_

_I don’t know_

_Weird_

_Well, keep me posted_

_I’m going to start this homework pile they gave us_

_Lol Cella this is not a pile_

_*rolls eyes*_

_Talk later?_

_Talk talk or text?_

_Talk talk_

_I don’t know_

_I just want to talk to someone that isn’t Mum about this_

_It’ll be fine, Sans_

_But yes_

_Absolutely talk later_

_I’ll text you when Mother’s out of commission for the night_

_Lol_

_My mom did talk about kidnapping you_

_If we ever get you over for dinner_

_Lol I wish_

_Say hi to your mum for me, Sans_

_[read at 6:43 pm]_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from 'My Oh My'  
> Thank you so much for the lovely reviews on the first chapter!! It was really encouraging to get feedback and hear (well, read) what people are thinking. If you'd like to leave a comment, I would _love_ to read it.


	3. you got me singing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody likes Robb's taste in music, although Jon's not that fond of Sansa and Cella's, either.

She tries to give Jon his fleece back after dinner, having dug up a cozy fluffy sweater of her own that falls to mid-thigh, just as his fleece had, though it’s a turtleneck, so it covers up more than the unzipped fleece had.

“Keep it,” he tells her, though, shrugging.

Her brow furrows with confusion. “But- It’s yours, Jon. And I have a lot of sweaters; you probably need this one more than me.”

“Keep it, Sansa,” he repeats. “If nothing else, to make up for the way I yelled at you this morning.”

The whole incident had come up over dinner, and Mum and Dad had almost had an entire cow at the thought of Sansa’s near miss. The way that Jon had spoken to - yelled at - her had been brought up too, by Robb (of course). Dad had glared at Jon for that, but Mum had just given him a thoughtful look. It had made her parents, at the end of dinner, pull her into the tightest hug she thinks she’s ever gotten, between the two of them.

So she hugs the fleece to herself, secretly glad that she doesn’t have to give it back. It smells so good, and she doesn’t know how that’s possible for a teenage boy’s clothes, but they smell like pine and new-fallen snow and something she can’t place, and when she breathes it in, she can just feel the tension melting away from her bones.

When she goes to bed, she presses her face to the fleece and breathes in deep before she crawls under the covers. 

The morning brings with it a series of texts from Cella: 

_Cella:_   
_Hey, Sans_   
_Mum’s asleep in the study_   
_So we’re all good_   
_I’m ready when you are_

_Sansa?_   
_You OK?_   
_I just called and you didn’t pick up_   
_I’m kinda worried, Sans_   
_What’s going on?_

_Hello?_   
_Anyone there?_

  
_Sansa, just call me whenever you wake up or something…_   
_I’m assuming you fell asleep early instead of thinking you got in another accident_   
_You’re fine, right?_

“Damn!” Sansa curses, tapping at her phone’s screen to bring up the messages app. Shaking her head, she clicks out of it and into the phone app. “Hey, Cella,” she says when she hears the phone pick up. “I am so sorry, I did fall asleep early. Mum and Dad weaseled the story out of Robby at dinner - although it didn’t take that much weaseling; he pretty much just told them - and there was some parental hovering for a bit and after that I was so exhausted I just fell right into bed.” From the foot of the bed, where she’s curled atop Sansa’s feet, Lady raises her head and whines.

Cella laughs from the other end of the line. “It’s fine, Sans,” she says, and Sansa can hear the smile in Cella’s voice. “That’s what I thought it would be - I just worry sometimes, you know?”

Oh, she knows. This doesn’t happen every day or anything like that, but it’s not exactly uncommon for Cella to have texted her in the middle of the night with anxiety-filled questions. It always makes her feel like a terrible friend, every time she wakes up to see that she has about twenty new texts from Cella.

“Anyways, Joffrey’s pretending to be sick today, Gods know why,” Cella grumbled. “So I was kind of also hoping you might get Robb to pick me up on your guys’ way to school?”

“I can probably convince him,” Sansa says with a grin. She adores her older brother - has since she was born - and she adores Cella - ever since they met in kindergarten - and Robb has definitely been a little goofy over Cella for just about as long as he’s known her. And Cella’s had a crush on him forever, since before they even really knew what crushes were. So she loves getting to see them together. Robb and Cella would be good for each other, she thinks. If only there wasn’t that pesky little age gap, which she thinks is what Robb is using to tell himself it’s a bad idea. “No, you know what, Cella? I can definitely convince him.” She’ll resort to begging if she has to, though she doubts it.

Traipsing down the stairs in leggings and a cute dress, backpack over her shoulder, Lady at her side, she calls, “Robby?”

“Yeah, Sans?” he calls back. “What’s up?”

“No shouting!” Mum admonishes them both, though she can’t quite tell from where. “Get yourselves into the kitchen, darlings; I have breakfast for you!” There’s a smile in her voice, though, so the reprimand isn’t a very strong one.

“Hey Robby,” she says to her brother as he enters the kitchen at a skid, arms windmilling as he comes to a stop. “Can we pick up Cella this morning? Joffrey’s sick, apparently, so she needs a ride.”

“Oh,” Robb says, looking a little dumbstruck. “Um, sure! Why not?” Sansa has to hide the way her lips twitch in her mug of tea - extra strong for school mornings. 

“Thanks so much!” Sansa holds a hand out to Robb, who grins and steps closer to her. Leaning forward, she smacks a kiss on his cheek. “You’re the best, Robby.”

“She’s kind of in the opposite direction of Jon, though,” Robb mutters. “We should probably just leave now if we want to get to school on time.”

“Yeah,” Sansa agrees. “Sorry we can’t have breakfast here, Mum.”

Their mother shrugs. “It’s all right, my loves. Just make sure you share with Myrcella and Jon, all right?” She hands Sansa a Tupperware of muffins, this time lemon-chocolate chip. Groaning in appreciation, Sansa makes to open the top of the container, but Mum smacks her hand. “Wait until you’re in the car, darling. Your lunches are on the counter - go on!”

Glancing at each other, Sansa and Robb exchange tiny shrugs over their mother’s behavior. Normally she’s a stickler for everyone eating breakfast at home, so this is a departure from how it usually goes.

“Oh, honestly!” Mum sighs, picking up the lunchbags and handing them to Sansa and Robb, respectively. “Go pick up your friends.” Sansa could swear she heard Mum mutter something else as they turn away and walk to the door, but it doesn’t make any sense, so she pays it no mind. “Have a lovely day, darlings! Learn well!”

As soon as they’re in the car - Sansa claiming shotgun since Jon’s not here to [claim seniority] - they break open the Tupperware and inhale a muffin each in seconds. “Oh, God,” Sansa groans, “these are so good.” Robb makes an appreciative moaning noise that she takes as agreement. “We need to scoot over to Cella’s,” she says.

“Oh, we’re going to Jon’s first,” Robb tells her. “He’s a little closer, actually, and the school is closer to Myrcella’s house.”

Groaning, Sansa realizes that he’s right. Which means that they won’t have Cella here as a buffer when Jon gets in the car, and it’s going to be Awkward As Hell. If Jon and Robb are still having whatever weird disagreement they had yesterday… She sighs at the thought, then perks up at the idea that she can just feed Robb little bits of the muffins as they drive, and he won’t have any time to say anything, because he’ll be chewing the whole time.

“Hey, Jon!” she chirps when he gets to the car. “You’re gonna be sitting in the back with Cella today.”

“Myrcella?” Jon’s brow wrinkles with confusion. “Is she with you guys?”

“Not yet,” Sansa replies with a smile. “We’re picking her up next - she needed a ride this morning, because Joffrey is apparently pretending to be sick.”

“He needs to pretend?” Jon asks in a [scathing] mutter.

Robb snorts as he pulls back out into the street. “Yeah, seriously,” he agrees.

Sansa frowns slightly with confusion, but twists in her seat to hold the Tupperware out to Jon. “Muffin?” she asks innocently, grinning at him when he turns red, though the smile fades when he refuses to meet her eyes and just takes a muffin without even a word to her. “How are you this morning, Jon?” she asks, trying to keep her tone perky, though she knows the last thing he wants right now is to have to talk to his best friend’s little sister, who he thinks is an idiot.

“Fine,” he mutters, biting into the muffin and groaning in appreciation, much as Sansa and Robb had. “Oh, Gods, your mother’s a good cook.”

“That she is,” Robb agrees.

The car goes silent as Sansa turns to face front again, lips twisting in [frustration/sadness] at how little Jon wants to talk to her. After a full minute of awkward, uncomfortable silence, she leans forward a little and turns on the radio, switching it to her favorite pop station and starting to sing along.

“Ugh, Sans, do you have to listen to this?” Robb asks, making a face at the next stop sign. “It’s horrible!”

“Oh, come on, Highgarden’s Roses are fabulous, Robb,” Sansa sniffs, wrinkling her nose at him.

“It’s a boy-band named after a bunch of flowers,” Robb says, frowning. “Is that seriously the kind of music that you like?”

Sansa gave him her best are-you-serious look. “Um, yes?” she replies. “I have all of their albums on my phone.”

“Good Gods,” Robb groans. “OK, Jon, the next time you’re up front, we’ll play some good music.”

It’s Sansa’s turn to groan, now, knowing what Robb considers ‘good music’. It’s certainly not good, and some of the things he likes she’s not even sure are music.

“My idea of good or yours?” Jon asks, making Sansa’s lips quirk, proving her right. “Robb, literally you and four other people the world over listen to The Journeymen. If I’m choosing the music, it’ll at least be something that the girls won’t completely hate.”

“Oh, just something we’ll hate a little?” Sansa asks, lifting an eyebrow as she turns to look at Jon, who’s sitting behind Robb. “Like what?”

“Like Black Knights,” Jon tells her. “You used to listen to their older albums when we were kids; do you remember?”

“Evidently not,” she mutters, turning her head to stare sullenly from her window at the passing neighborhood. Myrcella’s house is just a few blocks away now.

_Sansa: Hey, Cella, we’re almost there_

Her phone doesn’t vibrate with a return message, but the read notification appears, so she knows Cella will be ready.

“It’s this one, right here,” she tells Robb. She’s the only one of their family who has been to the Baratheons’ new house in the North. They lived in King’s Landing when Sansa and Cella were really little, and it’s only because Cella’s dad, Robert, sent her and her siblings - and their mother - to the North, which has the best education system in all of Westeros, that she and the other girl became friends at all, let along such good friends.

But half a year ago, Robert moved the whole family North permanently, for no reason that Sansa’s aware of. What would make Robert Baratheon leave his life in King’s Landing and come North? To make things even stranger, ever since they moved, he’s been giving Sansa’s dad - well, their whole family, really - the cold shoulder. She’s always heard from Dad what good friends he and Cella’s dad were as children, when Robert’s own parents had sent him North for the superior education and he’d fostered with the Starks. So it makes little sense to her that when he’s finally living near them, he’s not even come over for dinner once. She knows that Mum and Dad have reached out - both of them - to Cella’s father, and to Cersei. Neither seems interested in spending any time with the Starks, which is disappointing. She had looked forward to getting to hear more stories of what Dad was like as a boy. Robert Baratheon, by all accounts, is a boisterous, jolly man, and since he was such a good friend of Dad’s, she had just assumed that he would be like Aunt Lya, that she’d call him Uncle Robert. Half a year later, it’s quite clear that will not be the case.

Apparently, Cella’s parents had a huge fight just before they moved north, so she’s not exactly surprised that Cersei has become even more bitter in the last months. At least before this, she could spend a few months of the year in King’s Landing, but now she’s pretty well stuck in the North. Sansa would be frustrated about that, too, in Cersei’s place. Their new house is larger than the one Cella and her brothers and Cersei lived in when they first came here from King’s Landing for school, but still. Socially, the North is pretty boring compared to King’s Landing, and Cersei was raised as a socialite.

At least now that Cella’s dad is here, she’s allowed to come over to Winterfell more. When they were little, when they had just started to come North for school, Cersei let Cella come over for playdates, and Sansa was over at their house, too, quite a bit. But one day, when they were seven or eight, that all changed. All of a sudden, Cersei refused to let Cella even come near Winterfell, and Sansa was allowed at their house only very grudgingly. She wanted Cella to stop being friends with Sansa, too, but they had been best friends since almost the first day of kindergarten. Nothing Cersei said was going to come between them.

“Hey, love,” Cella says, sliding into the backseat and leaning forward to smack a kiss on Sansa’s cheek. “You are a princess among women!”

“Hey!” Robb protests. “What about me?”

Cella taps a finger to pursed lips for a long moment, then says, “Thank you for being Sansa’s chauffeur, Robb,” voice sweet as honey.

“Chauffeur,” Robb grumbles, then adds, “Yeah, sure, no problem.” Sansa smiles fondly over at her brother, watching as a look of confusion flashes across his face at her expression. He’s so adorable with how clear it is - to her, at least - that he utterly adores Cella. 

Cella joins Sansa in singing along to Highgarden’s Roses for the rest of the ride to school, where Sansa and Cella link arms and march inside together, not a glance spared for the boys standing watching them go.

* * *

Robb gives him a dirty look as he stands watching Sansa walk away from him. “Really, Snow?” he says, rolling his eyes. “I know you’re crazy about my sister, but can you at least keep your eyes inside your head?”

He turns his head to see Robb staring after the girls, too, a wistful expression on his face. “You’re one to talk, Stark,” he replies. “You do know that Myrcella only just turned fourteen two weeks ago?”

Robb turns to scowl at him. “Yes, I’m aware of how much of a creep I am,” he mutters. “No need to remind me.”

Giving him a skeptical look, Jon says, “After that whole thing yesterday? Are you kidding? She’s your sister. Why- How did your brain even make that connection?”

With a groan, Robb tilts his head back and scrubs his hands over his face. “I don’t know! I mean, it may have something to do with a few of the times I woke up in the middle of the night over the summer, and you were still awake, and… you know” - he scowls at Jon - “and I distinctly heard my sister’s name.”

Jon blushes bright red. “Gods, sorry,” he mutters, ducking his head and staring at his feet. He’d thought he was being so furtive! But apparently he got a little too enthusiastic and woke up his best friend - the older brother of the girl he’s been fantasizing about since he first started fantasizing about girls.

And it’s not like he hasn’t thought about eating her out - why else would he have blushed so hard yesterday, once he realized what he’d said? Still, it’s something he’s been curious about for ages, been thinking about doing to her since long before he started thinking about blowjobs.

And- Gods. Did Aunt Cat really have to make muffins again? It was bad enough the first time, but now every time he sees a muffin, he’s going to think about eating Sansa out, and he’ll end up hard. 

“It was disturbing,” Robb grumbles, “but despite all of that, I know you’d be good for her. She’d be good for you, too, you know. So I guess it’s fine, although I’m not really sure how you’re going to convince her now that you don’t secretly think she’s a total idiot.”

“She thinks I think that?” Jon demands, turning to stare at Robb. “I didn’t mean any of that shit! I was just-”

“Scared out of your fucking mind?” Robb asks bluntly. “Yeah, I was too. Only I think she liked my way of dealing with it better.” He laughs at the expression on Jon’s face - mulish and set - and adds,

“She was pretty darn scared, too, Snow. Only unlike your sorry arse, I actually tried to comfort her.”

“Shut up,” he mutters, remembering the look on Sansa’s face when he started yelling at her - shocked and hurt. “Gods, I’m an idiot.”

“No, just in love,” Robb says.

Shaking his head, Jon starts walking towards the school. “It’s not like anything’s going to happen, though,” he says when Robb catches up. “Like you said, she’s fourteen.”

Robb smirks. “You’re the one who pointed out that Myrcella is fourteen,” he reminds Jon. “I said nothing about Sansa’s age.”

“Well, she is fourteen,” Jon grumbles. “We’re three years older than them, Robb.”

“I know,” his best friend - in many ways, almost his brother - says heavily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from 'You Got Me Singing'  
> I'm imagining Black Knights being kind of like U2? Maybe? (But kind of also like Celtic Woman in the rotating singers over the years thing?) I feel like that's the kind of music Jon would listen to (/that Ned would pass on a love of to Jon). And I have no idea what sort of music The Journeymen is supposed to be. If you have a suggestion, I would love to hear it!  
> Many thanks to everyone who's commented!! I really appreciate getting feedback, and I'd love to get to know what you think of this chapter!! (But seriously, don't feel bad if you can't/don't want to/don't have the energy to make a comment; I totally get it.)  
> I kind of can't believe so many people have read this? Like, I am very in awe of the fact that literally anyone is reading and maybe even enjoying this. So thank you so much for reading this (and reading through the note!).


	4. i don’t want to run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cat makes lots of muffins  
> Joffrey charms Sansa  
> (the poor girl is only 14; it’s not her fault she can’t see through him)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gah, sorry I didn't post this... over a week ago! It was the Monday of my finals week, and I just forgot - and then the finals week did not go super well, so I was pretty distracted. Anyways, I hope you like it!  
> (I will be posting Ch 5 on Thursday.)

Every day for the next three weeks, Mum makes muffins for breakfast.

Sansa thinks it’s hilarious.

Robb gets more and more tense as it keeps happening.

Jon still turns red when she gives him a muffin in the morning. She’s still confused, but it’s _so funny_ to watch their faces - both Jon _and_ her brother - every morning.

Arya doesn’t get it, but she’s not complaining about the surfeit of morning treats. Several days into this, she asked Mum, “Why didn’t we have muffins every day before now?” as if it’s the most logical, reasonable thing to have muffins for breakfast every single day. And while Sansa appreciates watching Robb and Jon both turn red - Jon far more so than Rob, though - and while she does like muffins, they’re not her favorite breakfast item.

Which Jon points out, three weeks into the school year, when he’s at their house for dinner again. “Aunt Cat?” he says when he sees Mum assembling the ingredients for tomorrow’s batch of muffins on the counter after dinner.

“Yes, darling?” Mum replies, turning towards him with a smile. “Is there something you’d prefer for tomorrow morning?”

Jon hesitates visibly. “Well… it’s just… I know that Sansa’s favorite breakfast stuff isn’t muffins. I was just thinking that maybe a little more variety would be a good thing?”

Arya throws a pillow at him. “No!” she shouts. “No, Mum, keep making muffins every day!”

Mum laughs. “I can probably cut up some fresh fruit for you in the mornings, my darling,” she says, looking towards Sansa, sitting at the kitchen counter, working on homework. “And I can mix up some tea with lemon rind, if you’d like that, too.”

“Thanks, Mum,” Sansa says. “It’s not that I don’t like the muffins - I do, I just also really like having fruit in the mornings.”

“All right, darling,” Mum says with a smile, “what fruit do you want in the morning?” She turns to the fridge and looks in the fruit crisper drawer. “We have some of those apples you like - the Envy ones - as well as the little oranges, a few pears, although I was thinking of making that pear upside-down cake this weekend,” she muses. “But I can always get more pears. We have half of a cantaloupe still, too, if you’d like that.”

“Are there any grapes?” Sansa asks.

“I thought you didn’t like grapes,” Mum and Jon say at the same time, turning to each other with mirroring skeptical looks on their face, and Sansa cannot help the laughter that comes bursting out of her.

“Um, I like the red ones,” she says. “I had them at Cella’s house last year. You always got the green ones.”

“Well, I can get some red grapes for you, sweeting,” Mum says. “I won’t have them for tomorrow’s breakfast, but Friday morning?”

Grinning, she says, “Thank you, Mum, that would be amazing.”

“What do you want for tomorrow, though, dear heart?” Mum asks.

“The Envy apples would be great,” Sansa says. “They’re my favorite.”

Mum chuckles. “Noted,” she says with a smile. “Anything else?”

“Well, I do quite like the idea of tea with lemon rind,” she says. “But do you think we could also flavor the tea with lemon juice?” Ducking her chin a little, she adds, “I know it’s extra work.”

“It’s no trouble, darling,” Mum says, coming over and kissing the side of her head. “Besides, it’s not extra work - mixing lemon juice into loose tea and leaving it in the oven to dry is hardly any work at all. In fact,” she says, squeezing Sansa’s shoulders, “I think you should do it! It’s easy - we’ve done it before, remember?”

Sansa nods. It was for a cousin’s wedding - she and Mum had mixed up a few different kinds of loose tea for the bride and groom, and two of them were flavored. “Sure,” she says. “I can do that.”

“What else should go in a lemon tea?” Mum asks her, a small grin on her face.

Sansa’s head tilts to one side as she thinks. “Ginger is pretty common,” she says, “but I don’t feel like grating the ginger and drying it with the tea - that would be a little too much work for one night. So I think I’ll go with nutmeg?”

“Do you want to use the whole nutmeg or the powder?” Mum asks, walking over to the spice cabinet.

“Whole,” she says. “Can I use the mortar and pestle?”

The pounding sound of the mortar hitting the nutmeg - and the inside of the pestle - is irregular. The whole nutmeg piece does not want to be crushed. She groans, and Jon jumps up, comes over to her and peers over her shoulder. “Need a hand?” he asks, holding a hand out for the mortar.

“Thanks,” she says, handing it to him, watching as he, too, has no success getting the stupid nutmeg to break into pieces - until he does. “Gods, thank you,” she says fervently. “I was starting to think it was unbreakable.” His lips curl up as he looks at her, still pounding at the nutmeg. “Um, Jon - I can finish that,” she says, a little awkwardly. “You don’t need to.”

“I don’t mind,” he says lightly, though that is frankly ridiculous. Surely he has better things to be doing with his time than crushing some nutmeg for his friend’s little sister - who, by the way, he thinks is a total idiot.

She gives him a stern look. “Give me the mortar,” she orders. He sighs and hands it over, but stays as she resumes her own pounding at the chunks of nutmeg still in the pestle. They are slightly easier to get to break apart now - slightly. She gets it eventually, though, and finishes just as the lemon-infused loose tea is coming out of the oven.

In the morning, she groans with appreciation as Mum passes her a mug filled with the lemon tea, already filling a travel mug with more of it for her. “Gods, this is good,” she [groans], head tilting back in rapture. “Thank you so much, Mum.”

Mum shrugs and says, “It was all you, darling.”

“I only crushed the nutmeg,” she argues with a frown.

Jon rolls his eyes as he leans against the counter opposite her. “Even _I_ know that was approximately ninety percent of the work, Sansa,” he says.

“You helped,” she mutters, knowing her argument is at least moderately ridiculous. Another sip of tea, and another, and then a few large gulps in quick succession bring her to the end of the mug. “Whatever. Let’s go.”

“We don’t have to leave as early today,” Robb says, just now coming down into the kitchen. “We don’t have to pick Jon up today, so that at least halves our travel time. Would Myrcella even be ready by the time we got to their house?”

“Please,” Sansa replies. “Cella’s been up since five-thirty.”

“ _Why_?” Robb asks in horror. He’s never been a morning person, and has a _very_ hard time understanding those who are. In fairness, Sansa is also not a morning person, but she’s heard Cella go on about the beauty of a sunrise way too many times to keep asking.

Shrugging, she just says, “She gets up then every morning.”

“Again,” Robb says, “ _why_?”

Sansa just rolls her eyes and looks at Jon, who is munching on a muffin - today’s have dried Montmorency cherries in them, which are Jon’s favorite, so it’s no wonder that he’s taken three so far. “Let’s just go,” she whines. “I’ll text Cella now so she knows to be ready when we get there.”

The ride is quiet, with Robb glaring at the road, even though he’ll get to see Cella even earlier than he does most mornings - Sansa has no idea _what_ he’s unhappy about. When they get to the Baratheons’ house, though, it’s Joffrey who comes out, not Cella. She jumps out of the car and hurries towards him. “Is Cella all right?” she demands.

“What?” Joffrey says, confused. “Oh, she’s fine. She’s still tying her shoes, though.” To Sansa’s furrowed brow, he leans in and whispers, “I tied them together so I could come out here and say hello to you, Sansa.”

“Oh,” she says, blinking, brow furrowing even more even as a blush suffuses her cheeks. For all that Cella’s said things about him being a creep - and she _had_ seen a few things when they were younger that made her agree with that assessment - she can’t help but wonder if he’s changed. He’s being so charming, with the way he’s set a hand against his heart and bowed to her.

“Good morning, my lady,” he says, reaching out for her hand and lifting it to his lips. “How are you this morning?”

She blushes again. No one has ever called her that seriously before, and she quite likes the sound of it. “I’m fine,” she replies. “How are you?”

“Glad to have the opportunity to see such beauty this morning,” he says with a smile that curls one side of his mouth higher than the other. It’s adorable, she thinks, taking in the handsome picture he presents, all golden hair and crimson cashmere sweater and pants that she can just _tell_ are made of high-quality wool. (She _does_ like to sew in her free time, after all.)

Her blush brightens at his words, and he ducks his chin a little, looking just a _touch_ unsure. He’s always been good-looking, and it’s not like there aren’t girls who’ve thrown themselves at him in the last several years, but… he’s never actually gone out with anyone. Maybe he’s never liked any of them, the girls who stumble all over themselves to be near the Baratheon heir. Maybe he’s never said anything like this to a girl before. “Thank you,” she says quietly, looking down and back up at him, teeth biting into her lower lip as she looks at him.

“Hey, Sansa, sorry I took so long!” Cella calls as she bursts out the front door, making Sansa whip around from Joffrey with wide eyes, having completely forgotten that Cella is why she’s here in the flush of pleasure of his attention flattering her. “I don’t know what happened to my…” her mouth drops open as she takes in the sight before her - Sansa, blushing, and Joffrey with a little smirk on his lips.

As Cella walks towards them, Joffrey lifts her hand to his mouth once more, kissing it lightly and saying, “Until later, sweet Sansa.” With that, he turns and walks back inside, passing a frowning Cella on his way.

“Sansa, what was that?” she asks as soon as she joins her. “What did he say to you? I swear, if he’s said anything horrible, I’ll tell Father.”

“No!” Sansa replies. Cella gives her a surprised look. “I mean, no, he didn’t say anything horrible, Cella. He was being quite sweet actually.”

Cella’s frown returns. “Sweet? Joffrey?” She sighs and rolls her eyes as realization sweeps across her face. “Ugh, he’s the one who tied my shoes together.” Sansa tries not to smile - and fails miserably, making Cella mutter, “Little brat,” under her breath as they get in the car.

“What did that little jerk want, Sans?” Robb asks, turning around in the driver’s seat and looking at her with concern.

“Nothing,” she replies, shaking her head. “He just wanted to say hello.”

Robb makes a skeptical face but turns forward once more and pulls out into the street.

* * *

Joffrey finds her again, later, as she is leaving Choir. “Hello, Sansa,” he says with that little grin she remembers from earlier, tugging one side of his mouth higher than the other.

“Joffrey!” she replies in surprise and pleasure, feeling her cheeks flush. “I… I didn’t realize that you have a class near here this period.” Her brows draw together; in all three weeks of the school year, she’s not seen him in this corner of the school even once.

“I don’t,” he says, grin widening and eyes sparking with mischief.

Her frown deepens. “Then how…?”

“I told my teacher I felt sick,” he tells her with a smirk curling his lips. “I wanted to see you again.”

Pulling her lip between her teeth, she looks up at him - though only slightly, as she’s barely two inches shorter than he is, and she’s still growing fast. “Really?” she asks, feeling her eyes widen in pleasure. “I- why?”

The second the word is out of her mouth, she regrets it - she knows why he wanted to see her again, or at least she’s pretty sure. Not completely, but as sure as she can be without him telling her straight. He only grins again, though, and says, “I wanted to ask you a question.”

“Oh?” she says, feeling a slight sense of anxiety sweep over her as the clock on the wall ticks over another minute. She only has two minutes now to make a three-and-a-half minute walk to the other end of the school. She doesn’t want to stop talking to him, though, and she has a sneaking suspicion of what he wants to ask her.

He’s noticed her looking at the clock, though, and says, “I guess I’ll just have to find you after sixth period ends. You have Septa Mordane for Textiles with Myrcella, right?”

Nodding, she replies, “Should I meet you somewhere?”

His lips twitch, but all he says is, “You’ll have to find somewhere to lose my sister. I don’t exactly want her listening in on our conversation.”

Sansa blushes again, nodding. “I can send her to meet Robb and Jon while I go to the library to get a book?”

“That sounds great,” Joffrey replies. “I’ll meet you in the astronomy section.”

A tiny grin growing on her lips, she nods and says, “See you later, Joffrey,” turning and waving over her shoulder as she hurries toward Textiles. She’s late anyways, but it’s worth it; she just shakes her head when Cella asks where she was, what took her so long, and pulls her sewing bag from her backpack.

At the end of class, Septa Mordane tells them all to bring in an embroidery idea to start work on tomorrow, now that they’ve all gotten caught up on the basic embroidery stitches they’ll need. She packs up her sewing bag, stuffs it in her backpack, and says to Cella, “Hey, do you mind going ahead to meet Robb and Jon? I forgot that I need to get a book from the library.”

Cella frowns but agrees with a shrug. “All right. See you in a minute?”

“Yeah,” she says, turning right while Cella continues on straight, going towards the front of the school while Sansa walks to the library in its center. It takes less than a minute for her to find Joffrey in the astronomy section, and she grins nervously at him. She’s liked boys before - not many, but some - but none of them have liked her back enough to want to go out with her, which she’s pretty sure is what Joffrey got her to come here for. She’s not disappointed.

“Hello, Sansa,” he says, lifting her hand to his lips for another kiss, making her blush furiously. “I hope you are well?”

“Quite well,” she replies. “And yourself?” The slightly more formal manners remind her of old movies she loves, of stories about Queen Naerys and Aemon the Dragonknight, Florian and Jonquil, Good Queen Alysanne.

“I am quite well, too, my lady,” Joffrey says, smiling at her in a way that makes her insides shiver. He just stares at her for a long moment, though, so she decides to prompt him a little.

“You said that you have a question for me?” She tries to smile encouragingly at him, though she knows the nerves twisting in her stomach also twist the smile a little.

Joffrey inclines his head. “I do. I was hoping to ask you if you would be amenable to going out on a date with me this weekend.”

“Oh!” She was expecting it, but the question somehow still comes as a surprise. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t be averse to the idea,” she says with a smile curving her lips up, ducking her chin, flicking her eyes back up to meet his. Gods, he’s so handsome, she thinks. “What sort of date were you thinking?”

Something classic, she’s hoping, and Joffrey does not disappoint. “I’d like to take you out for dinner,” he says. “Saturday night?”

“Sure,” she agrees with another smile. “Saturday night sounds wonderful.”

“Good,” Joffrey replies. “Give me your phone - I’ll just send a quick text to my number, so I can let you know the time.”

“Oh, of course,” she says, reaching down into her bag, pulling out her phone, unlocking it before she passes it to him. “Here.”

He fiddles with it for a moment, entering his number, tapping out a text. “There you are, my lady,” he says, handing it back with a flourish. “You have my number and I have yours.” He pauses for a moment; just as he turns to leave, he looks back at her and says, “Wear something beautiful on Saturday. I’d like to show you off.”

Sansa walks to Robb’s car floating on air and reaches it before she realizes where she is; she’s already climbing into the backseat when she blinks, frowns, startles at how she came to be here.

“Sans, are you OK?” Cella asks, setting a hand on her elbow. “You seemed a little out of it there.”

A wide grin splits her face. “Guess what,” she whispers to Cella, almost triumphantly.

“What?” Cella replies, looking at her now with insatiable curiosity. “I thought you were just in the library for a book!”

“I was meeting Joffrey,” Sansa tells her, a dreamy smile drifting over her face as she thinks about what he said. “He asked me out on a date, Cella!”

“What?” Cella demands loudly, pulling back from Sansa, paling until she is barely shades away from ghost-white. “Joffrey? My brother Joffrey?”

Looking down, Sansa bites her lip. She had thought Cella would be more pleased about this. “Yes,” she whispers.

“Joffrey asked you on a date?” Cella asks, her voice so high it has gone squeaky. “He-”

“He did what?” Robb demands, turning around in the driver’s seat and glaring at her. “No. No. You can’t do it. Please tell me you said no, wolflet.” Her blush and averted gaze are enough to confirm that she did, and Robb curses loudly as he turns back around and backs jerkily out of the space, speeding through the parking lot and onto the road.

“When?” Cella asks softly.

“Saturday night,” she replies, voice small. She likes Joffrey; why is it such a problem for everyone else? And he likes her. This shouldn’t be bothering anyone.

Cella smiles weakly. “Sans… I don’t… I don’t want to tell you what to do, but… I agree with Robb. I don’t think this is a good idea. Joffrey… Sansa, I don’t know what he said to you, but he’s not a nice person.”

“I know he was mean to you when you were children, but can’t he have changed, Cella?” Sansa demands. “Is he not allowed to become a better person?” She huffs out a sigh. “Jon, do you think people can change from how they were as kids?”

“Don’t bring me into this,” Jon says shortly from the passenger seat. Sansa stares at his seat-back in dismay.

“But-”

“Yes, I think people can change,” he snaps, twisting in his seat to look at her with a gaze that is so intense it frightens her. “But I don’t think that he has.”

Sansa scowls at them all. “Mum and Dad will let me go,” she growls at Robb. “It’s not up to you. And besides, Dad is really good friends with Cella and Joffrey’s dad. And doesn’t he have some sort of bee in his bonnet about joining the Stark and Baratheon families?” She turns to send a beseeching look at Cella, who just shakes her head in a defeated sort of gesture.

“You don’t have to listen to what any of us are telling you, Sans,” she says. “It’s fine if you don’t; we aren’t your parents, and we can’t tell you what to do or not do. But you might consider that none of us think this is a good idea.”

Slumping back in her seat, Sansa scowls out the window of the car. Cella and the boys have to be wrong. They just have to be.

She’ll show them all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from ‘Slow’  
> Envy apples are a real thing - I get them from the fancy grocery store by my school. They are _delicious_.  
> I’ve been loving all the comments I’ve gotten - I’d love to hear (well, read) what you think of this little story of mine!  
> (I promise this is a Jonsa story, by the way! Joffrey will just be in the way for a bit.)  
> Thank you for reading this! I hope you’re enjoying it 😁😁


	5. you wanna get there soon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joffrey and Sansa go on dates (from multiple perspectives).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the format of this one is a little bit different...

**Sansa**   


The date goes swimmingly. She’s wearing a pale blue dress that matches her eyes, that complements her pale skin and red hair. Joffrey hasn’t stopped staring at her all night, and the restaurant he picked is one of the most upscale in Winter Town. He did make a remark when they arrived about how much more variety and elegance the restaurants in King’s Landing have, but he’s from there. And surely it’s true - King’s Landing is the capital of Westeros! It would be horrifying if the restaurants in the capital were all less chic than this one.  


Gods, she’d like to go to King’s Landing. It must be amazing there. She’s not heard the best of things about it from her parents, but Joffrey actually lived there; her parents never did. Surely he knows more than Mum and Dad.  


“Father had the right idea sending us North for school, though,” Joffrey says, the first truly complimentary thing she’s heard him say about her homeland all night, and she hates herself a little for keeping track. “The school system in King’s Landing is shit.”  


“That doesn’t sound all that likely,” she says. “And I can’t believe that you’d prefer to be here than in King’s Landing.”  


“Well, I’d prefer to be wherever _you_ are,” Joffrey replies, making her blush, “but it’s true. Uncle Stannis” - the president of Westeros since Mad Aerys, as everyone calls the last of the Targaryen presidents, was ousted right when they were both babies - “has been trying to make it better, but it’s more than he can manage with the money the country has.”  


She nods. “And it wouldn’t be fair for him to spend all the country’s money on schools in one city,” she agrees. “And Father - and Grandfather Rickard before him - managed the finances of the North so much better than Mad Aerys Targaryen.”  


“Father is always going on about what a good Warden of the North your father is,” Joffrey says, making her smile. “And it’s true that the schools here are much better than the ones in King’s Landing. Mother wouldn’t let us go to the schools there; she hired private tutors for us and had us educated at home before we started coming up North during the school year.”  


The discussion turns to more lighthearted topics after that, and by the time he drops her off at home, she could not force the smile from her face for anything.

* * *

**Robb**   


He sits with Jon, playing a game of chess in the front room as they wait for Sansa to return from her second date with Joffrey Baratheon. The little jerk. He smirked at Robb and Jon when he arrived to pick Sansa up, and the way he offered her his arm made them both shudder. He’s a creep, and hopefully he does something - _anything_ \- tonight that makes Sansa see it. He was apparently on his best behavior on the first date he took her on, but how long can that hold up?  


Jon is staring morosely at the chessboard more than he is actually making any moves or, apparently, thinking of strategy. He’s losing, and badly, even though Robb is nearly as distracted as Jon is, thinking about Sansa on a date with Joffrey.  


It’s just _wrong_ , he thinks angrily, scowling at the board. Sansa should be with Jon, who he knows for sure is not a creep, would not take advantage of her the way Joffrey is sure to, if this goes much further.  


“What do you think they’re doing?” Jon asks morosely, looking up from the chess-board with a kicked-puppy look on his face.  


“I think she mentioned something about a movie,” Robb says, making a face. “But it didn’t sound like Sansa’s usual speed.”  


Jon frowns. “What do you mean?”  


Instead of answering him, Robb calls, “Mum?” knowing that his mother will be in the kitchen, in easy hearing distance.  


“Yes, darling?” Mum replies, appearing in the doorway from the hall. “What is it?”  


“What movie did Sansa and Joffrey decide on?” he asks. “Jon and I were thinking of catching a movie tomorrow and wanted to know if we should tell Sansa to keep the storyline to herself when she gets back tonight.”  


Mum raises an eyebrow but says, “It’s called The Bend In The Road. To be honest, it did sound more like something you boys would like than her usual movie preferences.”  


They look it up, and, like they suspected, it’s an horror movie that sounds like something Sansa will hate. _Really_ hate. She’s never actually watched a horror movie before, as far as Robb knows, but the idea of them has always scared her.  


She comes home with slightly-red eyes and a fake smile on her face; just an hour after he goes to bed, Robb wakes to find his little sister crawling into his bed and curling into his side.  


“Hey, wolflet,” he murmurs, wrapping an arm around her and kissing her hairline.  


“He apologized for it. He thought I’d like it, and I’m the one who didn’t realize that it was a horror movie,” she says, burrowing her nose into his chest. “It took me until halfway through it for it to become clear - it was just really suspenseful before that. When I realized, I went to the bathroom for like half an hour, but there was still about half an hour of it left when I went back.” She sighs. “He apologized profusely when we left; he just hadn’t realized that I was so scared.”  


Robb just sighs and pulls her closer. He can just _bet_ that Joffrey was unaware of Sansa’s upset. The little creep was probably too engrossed in the movie to pay her any attention until it finished.  


* * *

**Jon**   


When Sansa gets home, she is all but glowing with happiness. Joffrey escorted her up to the door, and while Jon could clearly see that Sansa was half expecting him to kiss her, all he did was brush his lips lightly across her knuckles, leaving her blushing furiously in the doorway as Jon and Robb glare coldly at Joffrey. He smirks at them as he turns to leave, and Jon feels his fists clench at his sides. He’d like nothing more than to punch the smug prick right across the face, maybe ruin that ‘perfect’ nose of his.  


Ugh, when he’d overheard Sansa extolling Joffrey’s virtues to her mother, it had taken all his willpower not to burst through the door and tell Aunt Cat what a creep Joffrey is.  


Although since Aunt Cat has known about his crush on Sansa for longer than Jon himself has, she would probably just dismiss it as jealousy; that was the only thing that stopped him, really. That, and the fact that Sansa wouldn’t forgive him for ruining her date with Joffrey for absolute _ages_. She can hold a grudge like no one he knows; it’s genuinely impressive, and he really wants to stay on her good side.  


So for now, that means putting up with Joffrey the Jerk.  


Sansa was out with him for the fourth time tonight, and Jon had to force himself to think of _anything_ but Joffrey’s hands all over Sansa. He knows that they kissed for the first time on their third date; Robb was kind enough to report that to him, after Sansa came home with the widest, most excited grin on her face. He hates, _so much_ , that Joffrey is the one to get Sansa this excited and happy. He doesn’t deserve to make her happy. He doesn’t deserve to have her anywhere near him.  


She floats past him and Robb, her eyes shining as she goes up the stairs. Once she’s out of sight, he lets out a heavy groan and buries his head in his hands.  


“Hey, it’ll be all right,” Robb says, patting him on the back.  


“How?” he asks, glaring at Robb.  


“Joffrey will do something to make her hate him, sooner or later,” Robb says confidently.  


His eyes narrow. “This was their fourth date. Don’t you think something would have happened already?”  


They don’t find out until the following morning that Sansa and Joffrey agreed to be boyfriend and girlfriend tonight.

* * *

**Arya**   


It’s disgusting, the way her older sister is gushing about how _romantic_ and _gentlemanly_ Joffrey was on their most recent _date_. Yuck. Arya tries to hide her gag at the thought of Sansa with _Joffrey Baratheon_ , who everyone knows is a bully and a creep. Everyone except Sansa, apparently, who thinks he can do no wrong.  


But she doesn’t hide it well enough, because Sansa sees it and makes an ugly face at her. “What,” her sister snarls. “Jealous?”  


Arya shudders. “Gods, no,” she retorts. “I’d have to be _crazy_ to want to date Joffrey Baratheon. Maybe you should be evaluated for, you know, psychiatric health.”  


Sansa opens her mouth to spit something just as harsh right back at Arya, but Mum stops them. “Girls!” she says sharply. “Stop it, both of you. Neither of you deserves to be spoken to like this by your sister, and you will _both_ apologize. _Now_ ,” she adds, her voice as commanding as ever, when both sisters just stay still, glaring at each other instead of opening their mouths to make some kind of amends.  


She and Sansa have never gotten along, though, so it’s not like it’s much of a loss, Sansa finally having gone off the deep end and started thinking that Joffrey is for some reason an acceptable choice of someone to date. He’s not - _actually_ everyone else can tell that. Not her perfect sister, though. No, she’s just a perfect fecking idiot.  


Especially since Jon absolutely adores her. Arya has eyes, she can see it. She’s seen it for years, ever since they were little kids. She didn’t get it then, just like she doesn’t get it now - why on earth does Jon want to be with a girl who thinks that _Joffrey Baratheon_ is a good idea? - but she’s not blind. But why would Sansa go for Joffrey when she has someone like Jon?  


“Whatever,” she grumbles. “Sorry, Sansa.”  


“Sorry, Arya,” Sansa replies, her tone just as grudging. She turns and flounces up the stairs, tossing her long red hair behind her - Arya will never, _ever_ tell her, but she is a little jealous of the color of Sansa’s hair; it’s so attention-catching, and her own is just dark brown - in a move that makes Jon look over towards the stairs and sigh as he sees her walking away from them all.  


“She’s an idiot,” she says to Jon, flopping down on one of the barstools at the kitchen counter.  


Jon scowls at her. “She’s not an idiot. She’s just…”  


“An idiot?” Arya says, making a skeptical face at him. He sighs, shoulders slumping, and she feels like a jerk for upsetting him. He’s not just Robb’s best friend to her; he’s like another brother. He’s not like that to Sansa, she knows, but… it’s probably a good thing, because when she can figure out a way to get them together and they get married eventually, he’ll be her brother for real.  


* * *

**Myrcella**   


Joffrey just got back from another of his dates with Sansa. Myrcella glares at the book in her lap, furious at her brother for stealing her best friend - and furious at her best friend for being stupid enough to think dating her brother is a good idea. Mother doesn’t like it all that much, to her surprise, but she supposes that’s due to Sansa being a Stark - for some reason, Mother dislikes them all. She was fine with them at first, when they all first came North for school. Myrcella was over at the Starks’ all the time. But it changed one day, and she’s never found out why.  


“Have fun with the Stark girl?” Mother asks Joffrey sarcastically.  


“Loads,” her brother replies, voice flat as he glares at Mother. “How’s Father?”  


Joffrey doesn’t care about Father at all, Myrcella knows, so he can only have said this to get _this_ reaction from Mother - the nearly imperceptible flinch and her sudden fierce glare (at the floor, not at Joffrey. Never at Joffrey). Father is out tonight, though she has no idea where, or with whom. Mother must know, though, and so must Joffrey if he’s able to use the knowledge.  
She hasn’t missed the way Father has hated Mother even more than usual since they moved up here, and she wonders why they even moved at all if Father doesn’t want to spend more time with them. He’s always gone, so it’s not like he really sees them more, which was the reason he gave for wanting to move up here.   


That decision came after the worst fight she’s ever seen her parents have. There was screaming, on both sides - a _lot_ of screaming. She knows that Father was absolutely _steaming_ mad when they came home for the holidays. The first thing he did was slap Mother hard across the face. She and Tommen had both flinched, and she had pulled her younger brother away from the entrance hall, up to her room, so they could unpack a bit and let Mother and Father fight without an audience. Joffrey hadn’t followed them, though, and she wonders now if he’d stayed around the entrance hall to listen in, if that’s why Mother’s face has gone so white.   


“Out,” Mother says in glacial tones, and it takes Myrcella several seconds to realize that it’s the answer to Joffrey’s question rather than an order. She burrows further under her blanket, sinking deeper into the sofa and hiding even more behind her book, hoping that Mother has forgotten she is here. Neither Mother nor Father has ever again brought up the reason for their huge fight, and now she’s morbidly curious. What could both make her father as completely and totally furious as he had been and also make him want to move up North?  


“With her?” Joffrey asks meanly. Myrcella freezes, her breath freezing in her lungs. Her father moved the whole family North for a woman he was having an affair with? That doesn’t make sense - if he was having an affair, wouldn’t it have been with someone in King’s Landing? But then Joffrey continues: “With Lyanna?”  


Lyanna is the name of the woman Father was in love with, a long time ago. He told her about Lyanna, once, when she was very young and he still liked to spend time with her and Tommen. He said that she was beautiful, with long black hair - that Myrcella’s should have been black, too. Not for the first time, Myrcella curses how much she and her siblings take after their mother in appearances. Mother is awful, worse than Father. At least he’s just uninterested, most of the time, and she can remember times that he was lovely, playing with her and Tommen, just like a father is supposed to. Mother is cruel when she’s not cold and unfeeling; Joffrey is the only one she’s affectionate with.  


She didn’t know that Lyanna was still alive, though. She thought that Lyanna died years ago. If she didn’t… well, that could explain why Father was so angry, why he moved them all up here.  


It’s kind of awful to think it, but she hopes her parents get divorced so Father can be with Lyanna instead. Surely she must be better than Mother; Myrcella suspects that part of why Father’s so uninterested is because he’s bitter about marrying Mother instead of Lyanna. From the way he talked about her to Myrcella when she was little, she’s _sure_ he would have absolutely doted on any child of Lyanna’s.  


It would be so nice to be able to meet Lyanna, she thinks, sighing as she imagines it. In her mind’s eye, Father has his arm around Lyanna’s waist, and he’s smiling softly at her the way he never has with Mother.  


Mother is glaring at Joffrey when Myrcella comes out of her reverie. “Get out,” Mother bites out, low and venomous as a snake. Joffrey turns and stalks away, whatever good mood he had from his time with Sansa completely gone.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from 'Slow'  
> Ugh, I'm sorry about this! I loathe Joffrey, and he won't be around forever, but he does serve a place in this story. Unfortunately. (I _promise_ he is in 0% of the latter part of this story; we just have to get there first, and, sadly, it will be a little bit of a trek - I'm working on Ch 13, and he's not gone yet *rolls eyes at self*) At least I didn't make you suffer through reading about one of their dates from his perspective?  
> An important note - the presidency in this Westeros is basically a monarchy - Joffrey is Stannis’ heir, as Shireen is a girl (which I personally think is stupid, but just go with it for the sake of the story...).  
> Many thanks to everyone who has commented!! I treasure them all :D


	6. the remnant of dishonor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon is a sulky Gus (since Sansa's not around), and Lyanna tells him (and someone else) about Rhaegar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Christmas!!! (Or Happy Holidays, whichever holidays you celebrate!!!) Here is my Christmas Day gift to you all... I hope you enjoy it!!

Cella slides her eyes towards Jon and looks back at Robb with a roll of her eyes. The other boy is visibly sulking. To be honest, Cella feels like sulking herself. And doesn’t she have more right than Jon to be sulking? It’s _her_ best friend who’s gone all the time! Jon has never been anything other than her older brother’s best friend to Sansa. Well, to his knowledge. Cella knows that Sansa has a bit of a crush on Jon and has for years, but he doesn’t know that.

“Dude,” Robb says, poking Jon’s shin with the toe of his shoe. “You need to stop.”

“Yeah, this pining over Sansa isn’t good for you, Jon,” Cella says, leaning towards him and setting a hand on his arm. She’s actually starting to be a little worried about him. He’s been like this ever since the morning Cella came out from her house to find Joffrey coming back in and Sansa blushing like a ninny in the car. It’s been over a month and a half of Sansa and Joffrey’s relationship, and he’s just becoming more and more morose.

She’s been coming to the Starks’ after school, telling Joffrey - who’s often out with Sansa in the afternoons now - that she’s going to the library and will get a ride home from a friend, for two weeks now. It’s not the same without Sansa, of course, but she’s become totally nuts for Joffrey and Cella really can’t stand to be around that, knowing how cruel Joffrey is at home.

Jon looks up at them both, with a defeated and tired expression on his face, and Cella sighs deeply, reaching around to his back and rubbing a hand up and down his spine as Ghost ambles over and drops his head in Jon's lap, looking up at him with mournful eyes. “Jon, it will be OK,” she promises. “Sansa will come to her senses sooner or later.”

“Hopefully sooner,” Robb mutters; she shoots him a displeased look, as his words are not helpful. “Sorry, Cella,” he adds, voice still low.

“Come on, Jon, let’s play something,” she says, tugging at his hand even as she continues rubbing his back. “What do you want to play?”

“Monopoly?” Jon suggests, and even though she hates Monopoly, she just nods and agrees, because she loves Jon like an older brother (if only he was her brother and not Joffrey, she thinks). 

She _really_ hates Monopoly, she thinks later, when the game is all but finished, Jon having won after a long, drawn-out competition with Robb. She barely got any of the properties, and she only managed to hang on for as long as she did (through the first half of the game) because Robb would slip her extra money under the table and Jon pretended not to notice. (Actually, Jon slipped her extra money, too, though she doesn’t think Robb figured it out.)

With a long sigh, she says, “All right, boys, I need to get home. Mother will pitch a fit if I’m late.”

“Aww, you can’t stay for dinner?” Robb asks. “Aunt Lya is coming!”

She frowns. “Aunt Lya?”

“Yeah, Jon’s mum,” Robb says. “She usually works at night, so she’s almost never over for dinner, and she’s great. You’d love her.”

“She would really like you, too, I think,” Jon adds quietly. There is a little hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth, and it is that not-quite smile that makes her agree. She wants Jon to be happy, and… this will make him happy.

She goes to help Catelyn, Robb and Sansa’s mother, in the kitchen, though her experience with cooking is limited to a (very) few experiments with baking as a small child, mostly with Tommen. Catelyn just smiles at her and thanks her for the help and gives her very clear instructions, which she appreciates. It’s a little embarrassing when she has to ask what boiling water is supposed to look like, but she’s never cooked for herself. She’s never even boiled water for herself, either, in fact.

After a bit, Catelyn sits her down at the counter with a pot of peppermint tea, which is apparently Jon’s mother’s favorite. “What’s she like?” she asks, feeling a little nervous.

“Lya?” Catelyn says. “She’s a lot like Arya, or she was when she was growing up with Ned. She’s rather more settled now, though.” Catelyn’s smile turns a little sad. “I suppose having a child like she did will do that to a person.”

Cella frowns. “Like what?”

“It’s all years ago, now,” Robb and Sansa’s mum says, patting Cella on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.” (Of course, this only makes her more curious, but she shuts up about it; Catelyn clearly isn’t going to tell her anything.) “How is the poor boy?” she asks, cutting her eyes to the doorway that leads to the dining room, where Jon and Robb sit working on Physics homework.

“Not wonderful,” Cella says quietly. “I don’t blame him, though.”

“He’s not the only one missing her, though,” Sansa’s mum replies with a kind look in her eyes that makes Cella want to cry. “She’s your best friend, Myrcella.”

“Yeah, and she deserves better than my brother,” Cella mutters, not really able to bring herself to regret the words when Catelyn stiffens.

“What do you mean by that, dear?” she asks, but any answer Cella might have is cut off by the arrival of a woman with long black hair pulled up in a braided ponytail who is grinning at Catelyn.

“Cat!” she cries happily. “Oh, it’s so nice to see you on a day that _isn’t_ a holiday!”

Catelyn laughs. “It’s good to see you, too, Lya,” she replies. “And yes, I am also glad not to have to wait until New Year's to see you.”

The two women embrace like old friends, sighing into the hug and relaxing with each breath, the way Sansa and Cella are after they haven’t seen each other for a while, the way they were on the first day of school. Already near enough tears from Catelyn’s mothering, she can’t hold them in any longer. She is able to be silent, though - a skill she learned early, since crying makes Mother angry - as the tears slide down her cheeks. “Who’s this?” Lya asks with an easy grin when she and Catelyn part, though her eyes widen quickly when she sees Cella crying. “Oh, what’s wrong?” she asks, coming forward and sitting down at Cella’s side, setting a hand on her shoulder and squeezing it gently.

“Oh, my dear,” Catelyn sighs, walking over to Cella and drawing her up into an embrace, just as tight as the one she just gave Lya. “Sansa,” she whispers over Cella’s shoulder to Lya, who winces and nods in understanding.

“Your best friend, I take it?” she asks gently, squeezing Cella’s hand between both of her own when Catelyn finally lets her go. Cella just nods. “I am sorry,” Lya tells her. “It can be incredibly difficult, seeing your best friend so much less. You still see her at school, though, don’t you?”

Cella nods again just as Jon shouts, “Mum? Is that you?” and comes running into the kitchen, Ghost right on his heels. It’s adorable, Cella thinks as she watches him pull his mother into a tight hug.

“Jon,” Lya says when he lets her go, “are you going to introduce me to your friend?”

“Oh, of course,” Jon says, flushing. “Mum, this is Cella Baratheon. Cella, this is my mum, Lyanna Snow.”

She feels her jaw drop as she stares at Jon’s mother - Lyanna, with long black hair. “Lyanna?” she repeats in a shaky voice.

“Yes,” a very pale Lyanna replies. “Baratheon? Is…” she swallows, “is Robert your father?”

Cella just nods, feeling tears sting her eyes, because _this_ is the woman who should have been her mother - who _would_ have been her mother, had things gone very differently.

“OK, what’s going on?” Jon asks suspiciously. “Mum? Are you all right?” He turns to Sansa and Robb’s mum, asks, “Aunt Cat, what’s… why are they staring at each other like that?”

If Catelyn replies, though, Cella doesn’t hear it, because Lyanna steps towards her again and reaches out, holds her shoulders. “You’re so beautiful,” she says quietly. “You have his nose, I think, and his chin.”

“Really?” Cella asks tremulously. “Everyone always tells me that I look just like Mother.”

“In coloring, yes,” Lyanna replies. “But you do have some of his features, sweetheart.”

Cella sniffles. “He told me about you, when I was really little. He said that I should have had black hair, like yours.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Lyanna sighs, pulling Cella into a tight embrace, stroking hands up and down her back. “I’m so sorry.” Cella just clings to her, holding her tight, relishing the warmth of Lyanna’s arms around her. This woman has already shown her more warmth than Mother ever has.

When they part, Lyanna leans her forehead down to the crown of Cella’s head for a long moment. “He- I _think_ he thought you were dead,” she tells Lyanna, whose hands slide down her arms to clasp her own hands. “I- I think that Mother told him you were. He was _so_ furious last year, when we went home for the holiday. And within two months, he found a new house up here and had everything moved from King’s Landing.”

“Oh,” Lyanna breathes, eyes widening. “Oh, is-”

“ _What_ is going on?” Jon demands from right beside them. “What are you two even talking about?”

Lyanna sighs in acquiescence. “Jon,” she says, tone sober, “maybe we should all sit down so we can talk about this.”

“You can use Ned’s study, if you want,” Catelyn offers. Lyanna nods and turns, still holding one of Cella’s hands, and leads them both - her and Jon - to a room that must be Ned Stark’s study. Ghost makes to follow them, but Catelyn catches his collar and tugs him in the direction of the rest of the Stark dogs, who are mostly all in what everyone calls ‘the dog room,’ since it’s where the dogs all sleep.

“Mum, what is this about?” Jon asks, for what she thinks must feel like the thousandth time.

Lyanna squeezes Cella’s hand once more before dropping it and gesturing for her to sit down on a couch as she pulls a chair over to sit in. “Sit down, Jon,” she says mildly, but Jon shakes his head.  
“I think I’ll stay standing,” he says stiffly.

Cella stifles a sigh at his behavior, realizing only then that if Lyanna should have been her mother, Jon should have been her older brother. A long, shaky breath escapes her, but neither Jon nor Lyanna notice.

“All right,” Lyanna sighs. “Jon, I know I haven’t said much about your father to you.”

Jon frowns and glances at Cella. “Does she need to be here for this, Mum?”

“I would prefer that she was, yes,” Lyanna tells him. “I met your father when I was about your age, Jon, at a party that Ned and Brandon, Ned’s older brother,” she pauses “- and Robert, Cella’s father, and our parents were all at. He was…” She shakes her head a little. “He was charming, and sweet, and he talked to me like he thought what I had to say mattered. Ned- Well, you know that Ned was my best friend when I was a girl, and presumably you know that he and Robert have continued to be friends, but I don’t know if you’ve put together that Robert and I were friends as well. We were both closer with Ned than each other, but… I was like Ned’s little sister, and…” She sighs and looks at Cella, who opens her mouth to continue, waiting for Lyanna’s nod to begin speaking.

“My father,” she tells Jon, “was very fond of Lyanna, when they were children, and by the time they were about the age you are now, he was… head over heels for her.”

“But he didn’t listen to me the way that your father did, Jon,” Lyanna says, picking the story back up. “Rhaegar - that was your father’s name - he had business in the North a lot that year, and after that party, we ran into each other several times by accident before we started to plan our meetings. And by the end of the year, when I graduated from high school, even though I did feel something more than just friendship for Robert, I… was swept away by what I felt for Rhaegar. And so I left Winter Town with him, the day after I graduated, leaving nothing more than a note for Ned and Robert behind. He took me to Dorne, and… for the next few years, I lived there quite happily with him. The only problem was that the entire time I had known him…” An expression of an old pain - but one that still pierced sharp - crossed her face. 

Jon is frowning. “The entire time you knew him, what, Mum?” His head whips around as Cella gasps, as her eyes widen, as her hands fly to her mouth, as she _realizes_.

“Oh, Lyanna,” she breathes. Hesitantly she reaches out, holding her hand, palm-up, to Lyanna, who looks at her for a long moment before taking her hand. Jon’s mother takes a deep breath before she speaks again.

“When we met,” she says bitterly, “Rhaegar had been married for three years, and already had a daughter. A few years later, when I found out about his wife, she had just given birth to their second child. And then, a week later, I found out that I was pregnant with you.”

An appalled look twists Jon’s face as he stares at his mother, who looks down, away from him. Cella squeezes her hand in support. She does not deserve her son’s judgment for the wrongs his father did to her. “Oh, Mum,” he breathes, walking over to her and pulling her up into a tight hug. “I’m so sorry.”

“Darling, it wasn’t your fault,” Lyanna tells her son, though her arms tighten around him like she is afraid, still, that he will walk away from her. “I have loved you from the very first moment I knew you existed.” She snorts. “Even if I despised Rhaegar for what he had done to me.” She and Jon hold each other close for another long breath; when they sit, it is on the couch with Cella, Lyanna between the two teenagers. “I had a horrible, horrible fight with him, and told him that I wished he was dead, and within a month, he was. He and his wife and their children all died in a plane crash in the Riverlands. There was some money that he had left with me, and even though I despised using it, I had no other income or savings, so I used it to buy our house here in Winter Town and moved North again. By then, Robert had gone south to King’s Landing and married Cersei Lannister, so I knew I wouldn’t have to see him again, but for five years I lived in utter fear that Ned would see me and hate me for… my mistakes.”

“Mum, he would never,” Jon says, shaking his head, sure in his knowledge of Ned Stark’s forgiving nature. 

“I know, darling,” his mother murmurs. “But this was almost eighteen years ago. I hadn’t seen him at all in the nearly five years since I’d graduated, and you know how highly he values honor. I had disappointed myself; how could I expect him not to be disappointed in me?”

Cella sets a hand on Lyanna’s knee, smiling when she takes her hand and squeezes it. “But he wasn’t, was he?” she asks, knowing a little of how this story ends.

“No.” Lyanna shakes her head. “He was just glad to see me again, and happy to have another child running around Winterfell. He never spoke a single judgmental word towards me.”

“Of course he didn’t,” Cella replies, a smile curling her lips. “He’s Ned Stark; with his family, his honor is exceeded only by his kindness.”

Jon laughs, slides an arm around his mother’s waist and squeezes her into his side. “So… what exactly _is_ Cella here for?” he asks. “Why did she need to hear this?”

Lyanna smiles at Jon before turning to Cella and lifting a hand to her cheek. “Because…” She takes in a sharp breath, as if in pain, eyes glossing with tears that she tries to smile through, blink away. “If I had stayed in the North, she would have been your sister.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Samson in New Orleans"  
> Thank you for reading this!! Thank you especially to those of you who have actually _subscribed_ to this - I can't believe there's so many of you!!! It's so thrilling to get to watch the subscriber count rise. And many, many thanks to everyone who reads this. I love writing it, and getting to share it with you gives me so much joy.  
> (Also - for some reason, Chapter Five got saved as a draft in addition to as a chapter, so I thought that I hadn't posted it and subsequently posted it last night, but then deleted it when I realized what had happened. Sorry if you're a subscriber and got two notifications!)  
> (The 'sulky Gus' thing is from something my parents said when I was a kid - if I was very drowsy/falling asleep, they would say, "Oh, what a sleepy Gus!" I just changed it a little, to suit the chapter...)  
> In this fic, Robert is actually the father of Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen, even though they still all have blonde hair. Jaime is just their uncle, though he and Cersei are still a litle too close…


	7. written on my heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa and Cella have girl talk and rope the boys into making chocolate-chip cookies.

For the first time in weeks, Sansa’s getting to spend the whole day - and night, as they’re having a sleepover - with Cella. She has no idea how Cella convinced her mother to let her stay the night at Winterfell, when Cersei’s dislike of them is so well-known, but she doesn’t really care. Other than the thought of how thrilling it would be to get to sleep at Joffrey’s house, that is. (Of course, this is exactly how Cella convinced her mother; the one thing they seem to agree on, these days, is how little they like Joffrey and Sansa dating.)

They’re sitting on her bed, Sansa braiding Cella’s hair as the latter lazily pets Lady, when Cella says, “Can I tell you a secret?”

Her head snaps up. “Of course you can, Cella,” she replies.

“It’s really a secret, though,” Cella says. “I mean, you can’t tell anyone. Especially not Joffrey.”

Sansa sighs. “Not again, Cella,” she complains. “I’ve told you, he’s been a perfect gentleman!”

Shaking her head, Cella says, “No, not like that. It has nothing to do with Joffrey being your boyfriend and everything to do with him being my brother.”

“Oh. What is it, then?” Sansa perks right back up at the idea of getting to hear a secret.

“OK, so, you know your Aunt Lya?” Cella asks. “Who I’ve been hearing about for years but have never actually met.” Her brow wrinkles for a second. “Also who is not actually your aunt, but I digress. Well, I met her yesterday when she came over for dinner, and-”

“Aunt Lya was over for dinner last night?” Sansa cries. “Damn it, why did no one tell me?”

Cella just shrugs, as she has no idea why no one informed Sansa. “She was, and somehow I hadn’t known that her name is Lyanna? Oh, and also, no one had mentioned to her that your best friend Cella is a Baratheon.”

Sansa frowns at her. “What do you mean?” she asks.

“My father’s been in love with her since they were in high school, is what I mean,” Cella tells her. “She-” Her nose twitches as she tries to blink back the tears stinging her eyes. “She should have been my mother.”

“What?” Gaping at Cella, she tries to wrap her mind around the idea of Robert Baratheon, who she met several times as a younger child but always on visits to King’s Landing, and Aunt Lya, who she’s known for just about as long as she can remember but who has never left the North, not in the whole time Sansa’s known her.

“Yeah, and this whole time my father’s thought she was dead because my actual mother is a total bitch,” Cella growls. “She lied to him years ago, told him that Lyanna had been killed or something, I don’t know.” Lady jumps up onto the bed and butts her head against Cella’s shoulder, moving past her to curl to the side of them, in easy reach for both of them to slide their hands into her fur for comfort. Lady has been a comfort to both of them ever since Sansa got her as a tiny puppy, three years ago when she was eleven.

“And he didn’t try to find out more?” Sansa asks. “He just took her word for it?”

Cella shrugs. “I don’t know. She must have gotten Grandfather to fake some news reports or something. He believed her, though, and he’s never really been the same.”

“Oh, God,” Sansa realizes, a hand flying to her mouth, “that must be why he’s ignored my parents the whole time he’s been here. They’ve known for years that Lyanna was alive, and done nothing to inform him.”

“Why didn’t they?” Cella asks.

“Well, she didn’t- she didn’t even mean to see my dad again, really, it’s just that Jon and Robb were such fast friends that brought her back around Winterfell. So I’m not really all that surprised that she didn’t want your father to know?”

“I suppose so,” Cella replies, twining her fingers in the ends of her blonde hair. “I mean… and Sansa, you really, really can’t tell anyone this, I probably shouldn’t be telling you, because it’s Lyanna’s secret, and Jon’s a bit, too, I guess.”

“What is it?” Sansa leans forward, close enough for Cella to whisper in her ear.

“Jon’s father- Lyanna didn’t know when they met, or for any of the time they were together, but he was married when they met. She found out about it a week before she found out she was pregnant with Jon, and cut off all communication with him, and he died in a plane crash with the rest of his family less than a month later. So then she moved back here and had Jon and… you probably know more than I do about the rest of it.”

Sansa’s eyes are saucer-wide when she leans back away from Cella to stare in shock. “No,” she breathes. “Oh, no, that’s awful. Why would he do something like that to her?”

“I don’t know,” Cella grumbles, lip curling in disgust. “He apparently fancied himself in love with her, though. So…”

“That’s not really an excuse, though,” Sansa says, screwing up her face like she’s smelled something bad. “It’s not an excuse at all.”

“Yeah.” Cella’s eyes narrow into a glare aimed at Sansa’s duvet, where presumably she is imagining Jon’s father’s face. “It’s really not.” She sighs, glare fading away into slumped shoulders and a forlorn look that makes Sansa crawl over and wrap an arm around Cella’s shoulders. “Joffrey…” she starts, “Oh, Sans, I know you don’t want to hear this, but… I’ve wished that I had a different older brother for so long, and… finding out that it should have been Jon, and not Joffrey…” her voice is choked up, eyes red, nose twitching with sniffles. “It’s so hard, Sans, because he’s everything I could have wanted in an older brother, and I barely know him. I only know him as Robb’s friend; I’ve never spent any time with him.”

“Oh, Cella,” Sansa sighs, pulling her best friend closer into her side.

She sniffles again and tilts her head onto Sansa’s shoulder. “We’ve planned a little outing this weekend, if that’s all right with you? Jon and Robb and you and I could go somewhere and then you and Robb can do something while Jon and I do something else?”

Sansa tenses with an instinctual response of no on her lips, then frowns and shakes her head. Why would that be her instinctual response? And why does her belly feel like something curdling at the thought of Jon being close with Cella? He’s like her brother, Sansa tells herself. And she does want Cella to have a good older brother in her life, even if she can’t understand why Joffrey can’t do it. “That sounds good, Cella,” she tells her friend. “What were you thinking of?”

“There’s a farmers’ market on Sunday,” Cella tells her. “I didn’t want to do anything tomorrow, ‘cause that’s still our day.”

An eye-crinkling grin spreads across Sansa’s face. “Oh, yes,” she agrees, “it is.”

“Anyways, all that to say, I’m trying to get to know Jon better,” the blonde says. “Anything I should know?”

Sansa shrugs. “You mean, apart from the muffin incident? Mum’s made muffins for breakfast every single day since then, because apparently she thinks it’s hilarious, and he’s still turning bright red every morning.”

Snorting, Cella says, “As I’ve witnessed this on several of those mornings, yes, I did mean other than that.”

With a giggle, Sansa shrugs again. “He’s your pseudo-brother,” she says. “I think you’ll do just fine.”

Cella flops onto her back, stares up at the ceiling. “Yeah,” she says quietly, “I just don’t want to make any mistakes.”

“You won’t,” Sansa promises. “Also - now that you’ve shared a big secret, can I tell you one that I’ve been keeping for actual years?”

Cella’s head snaps around to look at Sansa. “Years?” she demands.

“Well, like yours, it’s not exactly my secret,” she says, “and you can’t tell anyone that I told you, except - maybe - Jon, OK?”

“Sure,” Cella agrees, eager now to hear this elusive secret. “What is it?”

“It’s about Robb,” Sansa begins, grinning in triumph when Cella blushes. “Oh, Cella, you like him,” she sighs happily. “That’s good, especially as my secret is that Robb’s been head over heels for you for years, pretty much since we were in kindergarten.”

Cella’s jaw drops. “No,” she says, disbelieving. “No way, I- what?”

Sansa smirks at her. “Oh, yes,” she replies. “Good gracious, he’s mad for you. It’s actually kind of hilarious to watch, in all honesty.” Her head tilts to one side. “If you don’t believe me, we could test it out…”

“How?” Cella looks at her nervously. “I mean, I would love for it to be true, but… how?”

Sansa makes her plotting face and says, “We’re going to ensure that he can’t keep his eyes off you all night, Cella - does that sound good?”

“I’m still not sure I believe you,” Cella says, “but I guess we can try it. It can’t hurt, right?”

“So, here’s what I’m thinking. I wear a lot of Robb’s sweaters in the evenings, and you don’t have any sweaters here, so I’m just going to grab a sweater of his for you. He probably won’t do anything, but he’ll like it.”

“How do you know?” Cella asks, biting her lip and wrapping her arms around her waist.

Sansa smirks and says, “Well, from what I know, guys always like seeing the girls they like wearing their clothes.”

“How do you know that?” Cella asks, making a disgusted face. Surely not from Joffrey; she doesn’t think she’s seen Sansa wearing a single article of his clothing.

“I read,” Sansa says dryly. “It’s in all the books.”

Biting her lip, Cella acquiesces. “But something comfortable, please?” she requests as Sansa tugs her out the door and down the hall to Robb’s room.

“Of course,” Sansa replies as they duck into her brother’s room. It only takes her a few moments to find the perfect sweater - it’s Robb’s favorite, from their family trip to Riverrun a few years ago. Dad has the same sweater, only in a dark grey that suits his coloring much more than the forest green Robb chose would.

She tosses it at Cella, who pulls it on over her head, feeling self-conscious at the way Sansa beams at her as she tugs at the hem and feels her hands get lost in the sleeves when she straightens her arms. “What do you think?”

“It’s perfect,” Sansa says. “Robb won’t be able to keep his eyes off you. And as that’s the goal…”

Cella eyes the fleece that Sansa is snuggled in, black and embroidered with a Winter Town Direwolves logo. “Is that Jon’s fleece?” she asks, eyeing Sansa, who she knows only has a black sports bra and her yoga leggings on under it. “Sansa…”

“What?” Sansa asks. “He said it was fine.”

Sighing, she presses her lips together and just walks down the stairs, hoping suddenly that the boys will have decided to go somewhere else for the night, that Jon won’t have to see Sansa wearing his sweater and wish it was because they were together.

Halfway down the stairs, though, she asks, as nonchalantly as she can, “Do you ever wear anything like this around Joffrey?”

“I only dress like this at home,” Sansa says, and that is enough of an answer. Joffrey isn’t welcome in the Stark household, because of Robb.

Robb, Sansa’s big brother, who loves her so fiercely but still is standing back so she can make her own decisions. Robb, the handsome boy whose sweater she’s wearing, who she’s had quite a bit more than a crush on for longer than she can actually remember. It’s just a fact of her life, at this point - the sun rises in the East, it snows in all four seasons in the North, the sunset from Casterly Rock is beautiful, and Myrcella Baratheon loves Robb Stark.

Grabbing her wrist, Sansa says, “Come on, Cella!” and drags her from the bottom of the stairs into the dining room, where Robb and Jon both look up and stare, transfixed, at the girls.

Cella blushes and looks at the floor, eyes darting back up to look at Robb’s, as his eyes trace down her torso, swamped in his overlarge sweater. Biting her lip, she glances at Jon, brows drawing together in concern. He’s looking at Sansa like she’s an angel come to earth.

“Hi, boys!” she says, determinedly cheery. “How’s the homework going?”

“Oh, you know,” Robb says, “just a little bit of stuff for physics.”

Beside him, Jon snorts and says, “And Literature, and History, and-”

“OK, it is kind of a lot,” Robb admits. “But if you two want to do something, it can wait.”

“We were hoping to make some cookies with Mom,” Sansa admits, lips twisting and eyes crinkling in the cutest expression Cella’s seen on her in months. “Chocolate chip?”

“You don’t want to make lemon cookies?” Jon asks, eyes still locked on Sansa. She barely notices, though, what with the way she’s watching Cella and Robb, looking thoroughly amused.

“We can’t always make lemon things, Jon,” Sansa says in a mock-chiding voice. “And chocolate chip are Robby’s favorite!” She grins at her brother, who, as she predicted, has not taken his eyes off Cella since they entered the dining room. “Cella reminded me.”

Cella glances sideways at Sansa, for she did no such thing, not even being aware that Robb loves chocolate chip cookies until right now. “Yeah,” she agrees, looking back at Robb, who is staring at her in something that looks like awe. “What do you think?”

“Want extra help?” he asks, an eager look on his face, as he half-stands from the table.

She looks over at Sansa, who nods enthusiastically.

“Yeah,” she says again. “That sounds great!”

Sansa and Robb’s mum gracefully cedes her kitchen for their use, gently reminding them to clean up when they’re done, narrowing her eyes at the boys as she does so. Sansa sets Robb to fetching down the mixing bowls they need, as she has decided unilaterally that they will be making a triple batch, and it won’t all fit in any of the mixing bowls the kitchen has.

Jon gets pointed in the direction of the cookbooks and told to find the recipe that’s marked Robby’s favorite in child-Sansa’s neatest handwriting. “I think it’s in this one,” she says, tapping the spine of a thick yellow cookbook, but pulling down another thick cookbook, this one white with red lettering. “It might be in here, though. Want to look with me?”

Jon nods, going over to her like he’s being pulled by a string and sitting down beside her at the kitchen counter, taking the yellow cookbook and flipping through it for the recipe, though his eyes are more on Sansa than the pages.

Cella sighs, looking at Robb with concerned eyes. “We need to do something,” she says. “They need to be together. Joffrey is… Joffrey will not do anything good for her, but Jon makes her the happiest I’ve seen her since Joffrey butted into her life.”

“We do,” Robb agrees heavily. “But what? She’s stopped listening to us about Joffrey - any time his name is mentioned by one of us, she assumes it’s something to try to convince her to dump him.”

“I don’t know,” she says, a lump growing in her throat as she watches Sansa poke Jon’s shoulder and Jon look back at her with open adoration on his face. Somehow, though, Sansa can’t see it. Cella sniffles as tears sting her eyes, turning her back to Jon and Sansa, leaning her weight on the kitchen counter. “But something needs to change.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from 'Born In Chains'  
> Honestly I know that Joffrey is not what people signed up for, so I'm hoping that this chapter at least a little bit makes up for him... I would promise that he'll be gone soon, but I'm working on ch. 14 right now and he's _still_ not gone yet... I'm getting there, though! And Margaery will show up in ch. 9, which I'm pretty excited about :D  
> (Also FYI - I'm switching to a Theology major, instead of Nursing, and it may actually take up more of my time? I'm not 100% sure yet, and classes don't start until next week.)


	8. you said that you were with me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa goes to a farmers' market with Robb, Cella, and Jon. Joffrey is not amused.

Sunday dawns bright and beautiful, though just as chilly as the North always is in the Fall. Sansa and Cella each make sure the other is bundled up snugly in jeans and long-sleeve shirts under soft woolen sweaters before they go downstairs for breakfast. Jon stayed over last night, so they don’t have to go pick him up before their outing, which gives them a little extra time, but they all want to make an early start at the market.

“Is there anything you want us to get, Mum?” Sansa asks, sliding under the arm Robb holds out and leaning up to kiss his cheek. “Robb and I can take care of some shopping for you!”

“Well, I wouldn’t mind some leeks,” Mum says. “Or carrots. And if there are any apples at the farmers’ market, try them to see if you like them better than your Envy ones.”

“I doubt that’ll happen,” she says, “but I’ll try.” Leaning further into Robb’s side, she looks up at him and whispers, “Doesn’t Cella look cute?”

Robb pinches her shoulder, making her frown at him. “Stop,” he says sternly, though she knows it’s only because he doesn’t think she likes him back.

“Well, I think she looks super cute,” Sansa says, loudly enough that it draws Cella and Jon’s attention.

“Who?” Jon asks.

“Cella,” Sansa tells him, an innocent expression on her face. “I asked Robb if he thinks she looks cute, and he wouldn’t answer me!” She pouts. “What about you, Jon? Do you think Cella looks cute?”

“Um,” he says, brow furrowed a little, like he’s not really sure where she’s going with this, “sure?”

“You don’t sound very sure, Jon,” Sansa says, blinking widened eyes at him.

Cella makes a face at her. “Do you think that Sansa looks cute today, Jon?” she asks, a little more pointedly than Sansa understands, especially when Jon glares at her. Cella rolls her eyes. “Or not,” she says sarcastically.

“Of course I think Sansa looks cute today, Cella,” Jon growls. “She always looks cute.”

Cella smirks triumphantly, but Sansa doesn’t understand. So Jon thinks she’s cute. He still thinks she’s an idiot who can’t take care of herself. He and Robb have not stopped warning her away from Joffrey since they started dating a few months ago. It got old after the third time they did it, and now it’s graduated to annoying - very annoying. Arya doesn’t like Joffrey, either, for whatever reason. Not that Sansa cares. Arya’s just a little sister who hangs around Robb and Jon like they’re her personal heroes.

“Let’s get going,” Robb grumbles. “Jon has shotgun.”

She and Cella exchange a slightly peeved glance and follow the boys out to the car.

The farmers’ market is lively, bustling. It’s Fall, finally, after years and years of Summer, and people in the North know to prepare for Winter, especially now that it’s closer, hovering over the land like a specter.

“OK, Robby,” she says, watching Cella and Jon walk off together, chatting, with a little twinge in her chest that she ignores, “Mom wants leeks and apples, if we can find good ones, and carrots. Where do we find those?” They set off together in the opposite direction of Jon and Cella, who have disappeared in the crowd. It doesn’t take long to find the leeks and carrots that Mum asked for, but there are several apple sellers. Sansa takes tastes at each apple seller they encounter and often chooses two or three apples that look good to her. None have measured up to her Envy apples quite yet, but some have come closer than she expected.

The chill in the air prompts Robb to stop them for a hot cider at one of the apple stalls, and she savors it, holding it in her cold hands, breathing in the apple-scented steam rising from its top, smiling down into it at the memories that spring up with the smell of cider.

Her reverie is interrupted by the clicking sound from Robb’s phone that means he’s taken a picture. She grabs for his phone, but he snatches it out of her reach. “Look at the picture before you delete it, at least, please?” he asks. “It’s a good picture of you.”

It is a good picture of her - hat tucked over her red hair, faint smile on her lips, cup of cider held just below her mouth. She’s not looking at the camera, and that makes the picture even better. Huffing a sigh, she tells Robb to share it with her and posts it on her Instagram when he does, tagging Robb and naming him the photographer.

It can get kind of annoying, how good Robb is at snapping pictures with his phone. She tucks her phone away and wraps both of her arms around the elbow her brother holds out for her, leans her head against his shoulder as they keep walking, Robb holding her cider. He leans over and kisses the crown of her head. “Sorry for surprising you, wolflet,” he murmurs. “I just had to - you looked too perfect.”

She rolls her eyes even as she sighs contentedly, nestling further into Robb’s shoulder. “You’re good, Robby,” she replies in a quiet murmur. “It was a great picture.”

They’ve just about made a circuit of the whole market when her phone begins to buzz in her pocket. At first, she dismisses it as notifications, but it keeps buzzing, and she realizes someone is actually calling her. “I have to get my phone, Robby,” she says, disengaging from her brother and fishing her phone out of her pocket. “Oh, it’s Joffrey!” she says, smiling. “I’m gonna find somewhere quieter to take this, OK?”

She walks away from Robb before he can reply with either an affirmative or negative.

“Hi, Joffrey,” she says warmly as she accepts the call. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you this morning.”

“Yes,” he says in a clipped tone, “and I wasn’t expecting to see a picture of you out and about this morning, either, so I guess we’re both surprised.”

Brows drawing together, she asks, “What’s wrong, Joffrey? I’m just out with my brother and Cella and Jon.”

A long silence comes from the other end of the phone. “With who?” Joffrey says coldly.

“Robb and Cella and Jon,” she repeats. “It’s no big deal, Joffrey, we just decided to go to a farmers’ market this morning. My mum wanted some vegetables.”

“Jon?” Joffrey says, his voice not just chilly now but glacial. “That’s your brother’s friend, the one with the black hair?”

“Yes…” Sansa replies slowly. “Why are you hung up on Jon? I’m just walking around with Robb; Jon went to check out the crafts section with Cella.”

Another pause, and Sansa thinks she can almost hear him clenching his jaw. “I don’t want you going out with other guys, Sansa,” he says harshly, though when he speaks again, his tone has gentled to nearly a caress. “You’re my girlfriend; I don’t like seeing you with anyone else. I want to be the one spending time with you, Sansa.”

“I’m with my brother,” she repeats in a half-hearted protest. “But I understand, Joffrey. I’ll spend more time with you, all right? How does tomorrow after school sound?”

“How about this evening?” he replies. “Come over for dinner.”

Sansa pauses, knowing that it’s family dinner night, just as it is every Sunday. “My family has dinner together every Sunday,” she tells him. “I can’t.”

“If they do it every Sunday, they can’t miss you for one,” Joffrey points out, sounding frustrated. “Come over. Wear that blue dress, and put your hair up in something nice. Something elegant, not like those braids you usually have it in.”

“What’s wrong with my braids?” she asks, chest hot like a shard of molten metal has been embedded over her heart, hands and feet suddenly cold. She’s loved braiding her hair, for years. Why doesn’t he like it?

“They look provincial,” Joffrey says. “I’m to be the president one day; you should look more elegant, more fashionable, when you’re with me.”

“Oh,” she says quietly. “All right, then.” He hangs up, and she stands there for a long moment, just breathing, willing her eyes to clear of tears. She’s managed it by the time she goes back out to find Robb again, and he only asks what Joffrey wanted, making a face when Sansa tells him, “Later.”

Mum and Dad are annoyed, of course, but Joffrey is a Baratheon, so he gets a little bit of leeway from her parents - Dad because of his father, Mum because of his uncle. Robb wants to pitch a fit, she thinks, but she disappears into her room before he can get into it with their parents. She doesn’t want to hear it.

It takes her a long time to figure out what to do with her hair, since Joffrey doesn’t like it braided. Eventually she settles on a sleek knot that requires a lot of hairpins; she knows she’ll have a terrible headache by the end of the night. Still, she wants to make Joffrey happy, so she pins her hair up and puts on the blue dress he asked for. She knows she looks beautiful, and she finishes the outfit with her favorite dragonfly necklace.

He smiles at her when she greets him at the door, though it dims slightly when his eyes slide down to her throat. “Oh, you’re wearing that?” he asks, gesturing to her necklace. “It looks cheap. I brought a much better necklace for you. I’m sure you’ll like it.” Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulls out a small, wrapped box that she takes with a small smile on her face. This is her favorite necklace, and he just called it cheap, even though she knows that it’s not. But he grew up in King’s Landing; he must know more about style and fashion than anyone who grew up in the North, where clothes are made more for function than fashion.

The box holds a delicate necklace that has red gemstones - rubies? - dripping from it. Her eyes widen as she stares at it in surprise.

“Like it, do you?” Joffrey asks, in that confident voice of his, the one she liked when they first started dating. She tries to hold on to that like, but it tastes bitter on her tongue as she smiles and nods at him. “Let me put it on you.”

She turns around, lets him clasp the necklace around her throat, smiles when his hands stroke down her shoulders. “Thank you, Joffrey. It’s beautiful,” she says honestly, turning ‘round again to face him, a soft smile etched on her face, a hand coming up to trace over the dips and waves of the necklace.

He nods. “You are my lady,” he says, sounding gallant again, nothing like he did on the phone earlier, making her wonder if it was simply the distortion of the phone call making him sound so angry, “you deserve the best.” He offers her his arm, and walks her out to his car, opening the door for her and smiling down at her as she settles into the passenger seat.

“Thank you,” she murmurs as he comes around to the driver’s seat. “What did you do today?”

They make light, substanceless conversation for the rest of the drive to his house, and she finds herself wishing that she was at home; there are always debates over Sunday dinner about current issues - her parents have raised their children to be politically aware and engaged. But she cannot just ask him about the new exchange rates with the Iron Bank, or the famine of silk-worms in Pentos, or even the way the new crop blight has been ravaging farms in the Stormlands. He will not think much of her questioning him about it; their conversation today told her that he cares more about her appearance than her opinions.

But he’s kind to her, she thinks as he offers her a hand to get out of the car, twining his fingers through hers as they approach the house, though when they reach the door, it is back to the usual, formal hand-in-arm posture. “My mother,” he says in an apologetic undertone. “She’s not very fond of you, for some reason.” 

She’s heard much the same from Cella, so it doesn’t surprise her. She hadn’t expected this apologetic mien from Joffrey, though - before this, he has been unapologetic in all things. It was something she liked about him, a few months ago; it showed that he was comfortable in who he was, settled as a person. Now she thinks she got it all wrong - Joffrey is one of the least settled people she knows, though not in a flighty way. Just in an… unsettling way.

“It’s all right,” she replies, quirking her lips into a smile as she turns her head to look up at him; he smiles back and brings his free hand to her cheek, right in his parents’ foyer, and pulls her gently to him for a soft, gentle, sweet kiss. They are both smiling when they part, looking into each other’s eyes, Joffrey’s thumb stroking her cheekbone.

“Sansa,” she hears, and feels her face freeze in its smile as she and Joffrey meet eyes and his seem to communicate wordlessly that it will be all right, that he will protect her from his mother’s animosity. Together, they turn to face her, Sansa’s frozen visage melting into a smile that almost feels genuine as she bobs a little curtsey to Cersei, who raises a mocking eyebrow in return. “What is this?” Joffrey’s mother asks. “Joff, you didn’t tell me that your little dove was so quiet.” Her voice is pointed, sharp, cutting, yet still sickly-sweet.

“It is lovely to see you again, Mrs. Baratheon,” Sansa says, widening her smile through sheer force of will. Cersei probably sees through it, but she only cares a little. It is Joffrey she is here for, not Cersei. It would be easier if Cersei liked her, of course, but she will not upset herself over Cersei not liking her. This dislike is new; before she started dating Joffrey, Cersei only disdained her a little, deemed her inappropriate for Myrcella to be friends with, though she never actually managed to convince Cella to drop Sansa as a friend. “How has your day been?”

“Fine,” Cersei drawls, walking towards them, eyebrow still raised. “My, don’t you look… mature.” The words are mocking, though, rather than complimentary. Cersei, apparently, does not approve of the dress Joffrey requested.

Sansa takes a deep breath and smiles at Cersei. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Baratheon,” she replies, sweet as her favorite lemon cakes. “And you look quite lovely as well. Have you had a haircut recently?”

“No,” Cersei says with a brittle smile. “Why do you ask, little dove?”

“It is only that it looks like some of the bulk and thickness of your hair has been removed,” Sansa says with an eager-to-please expression on her face, even though she certainly doesn’t expect her words to please Cersei - she can hardly believe her gall, that she is saying this; her mother would be livid with her if she heard it. “I thought perhaps you had gotten it done at a salon.”

Cersei smiles thinly. “Shall we go in to dinner?” she asks, turning away from them. Sansa slides a quick glance at Joffrey and sees him gaping at her.

“That was…” he mutters, “impressive.” He flashes her a smile, and she realizes that he liked her disparaging his mother. She smiles back and lifts up onto tiptoes to press a swift kiss to his mouth before she pulls him along by his arm towards the dining room.

Dinner is the most awkward thing Sansa thinks she has ever had to sit through. Mr. Baratheon - who is in love with Aunt Lya! She still can scarcely believe it! - is absent, as is Cella, so it is just Sansa, Joffrey, Cersei, and Joff’s little brother Tommen, who is still in middle school, in the same year as Arya. The conversation is stilted, and she is very glad when the dessert comes and she can take a few bites of a honey cake that she does not care for and pronounce herself full. Joffrey’s eyes light up and he, too, rises from the table, escorting her upstairs - not to his room, but to a sitting room that he shares with Cella and Tommen.

She sits down again on a settee, but Joffrey stays standing. “Have fun on your little outing this morning?” he asks. When she nods, his face contorts with fury and he snarls, “I had told Mother that you were staying home with your family this morning - you made me look like an idiot to her! Is that what you want?”

Her brows draw together as she processes his words. “No…” she begins, casting about for what to say, but Joffrey begins again before she can continue.

“Next time,” he snaps, “tell me what your plans are, and I’ll come and join you!” He scowls. “I don’t trust that Jon Snow. I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

Frowning, she asks, “What do you mean? What way that he looks at me?”

Giving her a disgusted look, Joffrey says, “Like he wants you. You’re mine, Sansa. No one else’s.”

She stares at him in confusion. “But Jon doesn’t like me like that,” she protests. “He thinks of me as a little sister, the way he does Arya.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Joffrey retorts. “I don’t want you anywhere near him.”

“Robb drives him to school every morning,” she protests. “It’s not like I can avoid him!”

Joffrey shakes his head. “I’ll drive you to school from now on,” he says, sounding angry. Ducking her head, Sansa nods.

“I’ll talk to my parents about it,” she tells him. “What time would you pick me up?”

“I will pick you up at about 7:20,” he tells her. It’s almost half an hour after Robb leaves the house to pick up Jon and then Cella.

“It’s really out of your way, Joffrey,” she says, leaning forward, taking his hand and drawing him to sit beside her, cupping his cheek and looking into his eyes. “Your house is so much closer to the school; why would you go to all that bother for me?”

He lifts her hand to his lips. “Because you’re mine,” he replies, a whisper against her skin before he leans in to kiss her, sliding a hand into her hair, pulling her in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from 'Samson in New Orleans'  
> Wow - I can't believe that so many people have subscribed to this? I would love to hear from you! Seriously - tell me what you're liking, or what you're not. Feedback is super helpful!  
> (For example: is Joffrey believable in this chapter?)  
> Thank you all so much for reading this! It's a joy to write, and I love that people are enjoying it.


	9. there's other ways to answer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaery finally shows up!! (Sansa doesn't like her too much... yet.)

Robb, as she would have told Joffrey had he seemed at all inclined to listen to her, has a cow when she tells him that Joffrey will be driving her to school now. “Why?” he asks, sounding utterly baffled. “You already spend all your time together, and he lives further towards school than we do.”

Knowing that his reaction will only get worse if she tells him that it’s because of Jon, Sansa just shrugs and says, “Is it my fault if my boyfriend wants to spend more time with me?”

“Who wants to spend more time with you?” Jon asks, walking into the room.

“Joffrey,” Robb snarls, hands clenching into fists at his sides. “Apparently, he’s going to be driving Sansa to school from now on.”

“You don’t look all that thrilled,” Jon observes, and she rounds on him with a ferocious scowl.

“I’m mad at Robb!” she shouts. “He’s being a jerk about this, and so are you!”

Jon’s jaw drops, and he looks at her like she’s just slapped him. “I’m being a jerk about this? All I’ve done is ask what was going on and make an observation!”

Ignoring him, she turns back to her brother and spits, “It’s not up to you, anyways, Robb. You can’t do anything about it if Mum and Dad agree.” With that, she whirls and makes for the kitchen, where she knows Mum can be found. “Mummy,” she begins, because Mum has a very hard time resisting any requests that are prefaced by that address, “Joffrey wants to drive me to school tomorrow. Is that OK?”

“Of course, darling,” Mum says with a smile, looking up from the carrots she’s chopping for dinner. “Was that it?”

“Well-”

“He wants to drive her to school every day from now on, Mum,” Robb growls, storming into the kitchen. “You know that’s one of the only times I see her now. Other than dinner.”

Mum sighs. “Sansa…”

“You said he could drive me tomorrow!” Sansa protests.

“Yes, he can drive you tomorrow, but definitely not every day,” Mum says. “Besides, I thought you liked driving to school with Robb.”

Shoulders slumping, she says, “I do, Mum.” If it was up to her, she wouldn’t drive with Joffrey every morning, since it is one of the few times she sees Robb now. Plus she can always count on seeing Jon, and Cella too on most days. But he was very insistent when he told her that he’d do it, so she doesn’t want to disagree. She doesn’t like fighting with him. “I just… it seemed really important to Joff, Mum.”

Setting down the knife in her hand, Mum walks around the counter and takes Sansa’s cheeks in her hands, leans down to kiss her forehead. “I want you to be happy, my darling,” she murmurs, looking deep into Sansa’s eyes. “If this will make you happy, you can do it - but only two days a week.”

Sighing, Sansa nods and turns to go upstairs. She doesn’t really want to be around anyone else for the text conversation she’s about to have.

_Sansa:_

_Hi, Joff_

_I talked to my mum_

_About you driving me to school_

_And she didn’t love the idea_

_She said you can drive me twice a week, but I have_   
_to go with Robb every other day_

_She’s really big on sibling bonding_

_You know that_

_Joffrey:_

_What?_

_No._

_Sansa, I’M going to drive you every day._

_Your mother will just have to agree to it_

_She won’t_

_There’s no way_

_She has to._

_She WON’T, Joffrey_

_You don’t know what she’s like_

_She’s not like your mother_

_She actually likes it when we get along with each_   
_other_

_Sansa_

_This is not negotiable_

_I don’t want you around him_

_I don’t like the way he looks at you_

_What way he looks at me?_

_He thinks of me as a little sister_

_I hope not_

_No one should look at their sister the way he_   
_looks at you_

_Joffrey_

_He doesn’t like me_

_He thinks I’m an idiot_

_He thinks you’re hot, Sansa_

_You are, of course_

_But I don’t want anyone else looking at you_   
_that way_

_I’m the only one who should look at you that_   
_way_

Sansa blushes at her boyfriend’s words. It’s ridiculous, of course, what he thinks, because there’s no way Jon Snow likes her like that, but… the idea of it makes her blush almost as much as the possessiveness in Joffrey’s words.

_I don’t want anyone else looking at me like that_

_But if you want to drive me to school every day,_   
_you’ll have to convince my mum_

_You can talk to her tomorrow morning when you_   
_pick me up_

_Fine._

_I’ll see you tomorrow._

Pressing her lips together, Sansa feels her heart sink at the texts. Joffrey sounds mad, and he has a right to be. She told him it would be all right for him to drive her every day, even though she knew it wouldn’t be likely for her parents to agree to it. She’s the one in the wrong here.

* * *

 

In the morning, Robb glares at the Tupperware of muffins that Mum hands him as if it has done him a personal wrong. He doesn’t speak to her, and that makes it so much worse. She bites her lower lip, hard, to keep the tears back. She doesn’t want Robb to know how much this is affecting her.

Joffrey doesn’t come in, though, when he texts her that he’s arrived, just tells her to come out to the car. His face is set, jaw tense, when she slips into the passenger seat and murmurs a quiet, “Hello.” He doesn’t reply, just pulls out and speeds towards the school with a hard look on his face.

When they are a few blocks away from school, he pulls into a side street and stops the car. “Sansa,” he says, snappish, “you’re the one who said this would be all right. This is your fault. I just want to see you more.”

“I know,” she whispers, throat tight, eyes stinging. “I’m really sorry, Joffrey. I thought my parents would be fine with it.”

“Well, apparently they aren’t,” he snaps. “We’ll talk about this after school.” His voice is hard as he pulls the car back out and steers it into the parking lot without another word.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers again as he turns into a spot and parks.

He looks at her contemptuously. “You should be.”

She looks down at her knees for a long moment before she gets out of the car. Once they are nearing the steps up to the school, though, Joffrey takes her hand and brings it to his lips.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs against her fingers. “I shouldn’t be treating you this way. You’re mine; that means I need to take care of you, not say things like that.”

She pauses and tilts her head towards him, inviting, smiling when he leans in and kisses her. “It’s fine,” she replies. “You didn’t mean it.”

His lips purse but he says nothing in response, just lifting her hand to his lips again and kissing it.

* * *

 

When she gets to Westerosi History, Cella eyes her for a long moment, then leans over and hugs her. “Missed you this morning, Sans.”

“Aww, I missed you, too,” she replies, smiling at Cella, feeling a sense of calm sweep over her.

“How was my brother?” Cella asks carefully. “He was all right?”

Nodding, Sansa says, “He was fine.” Cella eyes her again at the short response, but she doesn’t want to say anything that would make Cella think she was right about her dating Joffrey.

Their classes breeze by, and at lunch Cella joins her with Joffrey’s friends. It is a quiet, awkward lunch, and Cella pulls her away for “girl talk” as quickly as she can. Sansa appreciates it, especially when Cella walks with her all the way to the Choir room, even though it’s on a different floor from the Drawing & Painting classroom. There aren’t many people there yet, and Cella waits quietly with her, their heads leaning together, until a group of junior and senior girls walks in, laughing loudly.

With a squeeze of her fingers, Cella rises and departs, smiling over her shoulder as she leaves.

Choir as a whole is easy, but the last song - one they’ve just started working on - is an old Northern ballad about a pair of doomed lovers. It makes her throat tighten and eyes blur with tears, and she excuses herself to the bathroom at the first opportunity to do so, determining that she’ll just hide in here until the end of class, not wanting to have to listen to any more of the song.

Just as the end of the class period nears, Margaery Tyrell says, “I need to talk to you,” appearing behind her in the bathroom mirror. “It’s really important.”

“I don’t even know you,” Sansa says, blinking in surprise at the senior girl as she finishes washing her hands. “What do you need to talk to me about?”

Margaery presses her lips together and sighs. “It’s about Joffrey,” she says softly, touching Sansa’s elbow. “He’s… he’s dangerous, Sansa, and I’d like to help you.”

“What do you mean?” Sansa asks. “How is he dangerous? Nothing has ever happened to me with him.”

Margaery’s hand slides up to rub circles between her shoulderblades. “Not yet, sweet girl,” she says. “But it will. I’ve seen people like him in relationships before - it doesn’t end well. I’d like to help you, if you’ll let me.”

“I’m fine,” Sansa snaps, “and I have to get back to class.”

With a hand around her wrist, Margaery stops her and pulls her around to face the brunette. “Even if you’re fine now,” she says, “you won’t be, and if I can prevent that, I’d like to. I want you to be happy, and you won’t be happy with Joffrey.”

Sansa scowls at her and tugs, trying to pull her hand from Margaery’s grasp, but the older girl’s hold on her is strong. “Yes, I will be happy with Joffrey,” she snaps. “I love him.”

Margaery sighs and her face settles into a saddened expression. “Sansa, just listen to me, please.”

“Fine,” she growls. “Talk.”

“He’s abusive to you, Sansa,” Margaery says, almost pleading with her.

“He doesn’t hit me,” Sansa replies hotly. “He’d never hit me.”

“Maybe,” Margaery says with a shrug. “But at the beginning of the year you were so bright and vibrant. Now… you’re… dimmer. You don’t shine as brightly and easily anymore, and you look to him for approval on everything. Sansa, sweet girl, that’s not healthy. That’s not what a relationship is supposed to be like.”

Glaring at the floor, Sansa doesn’t grace her with a response.

“I want to help you, Sansa.” Margaery reaches out and strokes the braid that trails over Sansa’s shoulder. “If you agree - and only if you agree, all right, Sansa? - I could seduce Joffrey and have him end your relationship for one with me.”

Sansa jerks her hand out of Margaery’s grip, rubbing at the red mark on her wrist from Margaery’s tight hold. “Stay away from me!” she seethes. “And stay away from Joffrey, too!”

As she storms down the hallway, back toward the Choir room, she fumes… but sitting at her chair in the classroom, she remembers what he said to her last Sunday, and Margaery’s words stick in her head: I want you to be happy.

When school lets out that afternoon, instead of going to meet Joffrey, she sends him a quick text (Have to go home with Robb today. Sorry!) and goes to find Robb, Jon, and Cella. She wants to tell Cella what that presumptuous bitch said to her in the bathroom!

Only, Cella doesn’t want her to be with Joffrey. She’d probably think it was a marvelous idea and tell Sansa to go for it. The idea makes her scowl and she huffs as she goes for the backseat of Robb’s car only to see that Jon and Cella are sitting together in the backseat.

“Playing chauffeur again, Robby?” she asks her brother, a little more brattily than she usually would.

Robb is looking over at her with surprise on his face; he turned when she opened the car door. “I wasn’t expecting to see you this afternoon, Sansa,” he says carefully. “Weren’t you going somewhere with Joffrey?”

She shrugs as she gets into the passenger seat. “Nope. We decided to do something tomorrow instead. I have a lot of homework today.”

“Oh,” Robb says. He sounds almost disappointed, and Sansa frowns at his tone. With the way he complains about how he never sees her anymore now that she’s dating Joffrey, you’d think he would be a little more enthusiastic to see her.

“I can leave if you want to be alone…” she offers, eyeing all three of them. None of them will meet her eyes. “Seriously, what’s going on?”

“Nothing, wolflet,” Robb says. “Everything’s fine, and I’m glad to see you.” He reaches across the center console to pull her into a side-hug and kiss her temple. “I love you more than anything,” he tells her.

“Mmm…” she sighs into his shoulder. “I love you more than anything, too, Robby. Let’s go home.”

“Oh…” Robb says. “Sure… I was just going to drop Jon and Cella off at Jon’s house for a while.”

From the backseat, Cella smirks. “My mother still thinks I’m going to the library. I stopped sharing my location with her, and I’ve been telling her that it won’t reconnect, so she has no idea where I’m going.”

Sansa laughs at Cella’s happy, playful smile, even though it is at the expense of her mother. It’s good to see Cella smiling; they haven’t spent enough time together this year, Joffrey taking up much of her time outside of school. She eats lunch with him and his cronies most days now, cutting down on her time with Cella even more. And even when Joffrey takes her over to his house, Cella is mostly not there. She’s probably spending time with Robb (Sansa hopes!) and Jon, getting to know her almost-brother better. Is it terrible of Sansa to wish that Cella would make that kind of effort with Joffrey? She just wants them to get along, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen. “So you and Jon are going to… what? Have tea?”

“Coffee, more like,” Jon mutters as the car pulls out into the street. “I think tea is more your speed, Sansa.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say no to tea,” Cella says from behind Sansa. “But I think I could go for a coffee this afternoon, too.”

Jon just nods, and the rest of the drive passes in a long, awkward silence. When Robb pulls to the curb in front of Jon’s house, Cella jumps out eagerly to look at it and grin at Jon, who wraps an arm around her shoulders. “It’s not much,” Jon says with a shrug, “but it’s home.”

“No, it’s beautiful,” Cella replies, looking the small house up and down. “I love the garden - does your mother do that?”

“I do, actually,” Jon begins to say as Robb pulls back into the street and drives back home.

When Sansa looks over at him, he is shaking his head. “Wolflet, what is going on?” he asks, reaching a hand across to her shoulder. “You seem preoccupied.”

Giving her favorite brother an apologetic smile, she says, “Just thinking about something that happened today.”

“With Joffrey?” Robb asks, sounding a little mad. But then he says, “Shit. No. Shit, Sans, I didn’t mean to say that. It just slipped out.”

With a sigh, she nods her understanding and forgiveness, turning her head and gazing at Robb the rest of the way home. When they get out of the car, Robb wraps his arm around her shoulders, pulls her into his side. “Hi Robby,” she murmurs, burrowing her head into his shoulder.

“Hey, wolflet,” he replies, kissing her temple. “Gods, you’re getting so tall! Who gave you permission to grow so much?”

Sansa snorts and rolls her eyes. “Oh, please, Robb,” she mutters. “I haven’t grown that much.” But she is much closer to Robb’s height than she used to be, and she’s definitely not done growing.

He smiles at her a little sadly and kisses her forehead again. “Yeah, you have,” he says. “Your height’s not the only thing that’s changed, though.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from 'Samson in New Orleans'  
> I'm super excited about Margaery, y'all. I love her to pieces, and she is going to have lots of fun with Sansa ( _with_ being the operative word) in the next several chapters. Something to look forward to!  
> And yeah, I am sorry about Joffrey... I promise he has bad things coming his way, though. *wicked smile*


	10. on the bridge of misery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joffrey shows his true colors...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for physical abuse: Joffrey hits Sansa twice in this chapter.

Torrhen Karstark catches her after Literature & Composition, when she’s on her way to eat lunch with Joffrey. “Hey, Sansa!” he says. “You did a really good job with that poetry quiz. Do you think you could help me study? I need to do a lot better in this class than I’m doing now.”

“Sure, Torrhen,” she replies with a smile that - to her annoyance at Margaery’s being correct - does not come as easily to her lips as it used to. “When would be a good time for you?”

“Now?” he suggests hopefully. “We have that test next week, and I’m kind of freaking out about it.”

She sighs a little. “I usually have lunch with my boyfriend,” she tells him, realizing that the term holds no excitement for her anymore. “He’s waiting for me.”

“Oh,” Torrhen Karstark says, shoulders slumping. “After school? We could walk over to the library?”

Biting her lip, Sansa’s brows draw together as she thinks about when she has free time. A lot of her after-school time now is spent with Joffrey - nearly all of it, really, apart from after when her parents require him to have her back home by. “I don’t know…” she says, feeling even guiltier as his face falls, discouraged. “I’ll see what I can figure out, all right, Torrhen? Give me your number, so I can text you.”

“Thanks, Sansa,” he says with a slightly-tired smile as he finishes tapping his number into her phone and hands it back to her, leaning forward and giving her a quick hug. She returns it; she’s known him since nursery school, as their fathers work together a lot, with Dad being the Warden of the North and Rickard Karstark the mayor of Karhold.

“Hopefully I’ll see you later,” she says with a smile as she turns - to see a thunderous-looking Joffrey. Her eyes widen, the smile falls from her face as she stares up at him in shock. “What is it, Joffrey?” she asks sweetly, bringing the smile back to her lips, hoping that the expression on his face will be enough of a warning to Torrhen Karstark to get the hell away.

He grabs her wrist as he steps into her personal space, holding it up to his chest with a hand that squeezes tighter and tighter until she fears her hand will go numb. His other hand sweeps around to the small of her back, holding her against him. “What’s going on, Sansa?” he asks, crushing her wrist in his hand. “Who is this?”

“This is Torrhen Karstark,” she says, not looking back at the boy, who is now the unfortunate recipient of one of Joffrey’s hateful glares. “We have Lit & Comp together, and he asked me to help him study.”

“And why did you need his number?” Joffrey asks through gritted teeth.

She brings a soft smile to her face and lifts her free hand to Joffrey’s cheek, hoping the gesture will calm him. “To plan a time to meet,” she says, the hope that Joffrey won’t overreact dying the second the words are out of her mouth.

“No,” he snaps. Eyes narrowing on Torrhen, behind her, he says, “She won’t be helping you, Karstark. Run along.”

“Are you all right, Sansa?” Torrhen asks, reaching forward and touching his fingertips to her back. It’s a mistake, she knows - Joffrey won’t respond well.

And he doesn’t. “Keep your hands off her,” Joffrey snaps at Torrhen, batting his hand away from Sansa’s back. “And she’s fine.”

“All right,” Torrhen says. “I’ll see you in class tomorrow, Sansa.”

She just nods without looking away from Joffrey. Torrhen’s footsteps echo down the hallway, and when they fade from hearing, Joffrey steers her into an empty classroom. “I don’t want you talking to him again,” he says.

“I have class with him,” Sansa argues. “I can’t just never talk to him again! What would I tell the teacher? ‘Oh, I can’t talk to him; my boyfriend won’t let me’?”

She doesn’t see the strike coming at all, just feels the fiery sting explode over her right cheek. Making a tiny squeak of shock, she stumbles back a few steps and drops into a chair.

“What- Joffrey?” She looks up at him with a bewildered expression on her face. She can’t even make sense of what just happened. Joffrey can’t have hit her. He wouldn’t. He would never do that.

He has a look of shock mirroring her own on his face. “Sansa,” he murmurs, coming towards her, lifting a hand to touch his fingertips to her cheek. “Sansa, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.” He strokes his fingertips lightly over the skin of her cheek, making her wince. His grip tightens around her jaw for a moment. “You just made me so angry, Sansa,” he says, sounding almost bewildered. “What was I supposed to do?”

She just blinks at him, still in shock that he hit her.

Bringing his other hand up so both of his hands cup her cheeks, he says, “Sansa, sweet lady, forgive me, please.”

“Of course,” she whispers on reflex. “Joffrey-”

He cuts her words off with a kiss to her lips, just a quick press that precedes the peppering of kisses over the cheek he hit. “Let’s go to lunch, Sansa,” he murmurs, directly into her ear.

She nods and follows him down to the cafeteria, sitting docilely, quietly, beside him for the duration of lunch before she leaves him with a quick kiss to his lips on her way to Choir.

Not even a day has passed since Margaery Tyrell approached her, and already Sansa has been proven wrong. Joffrey has hit her. She doesn’t know what to do - he’s only been sweet with her other than that, but… How could he have hit her?

He seemed so apologetic, so remorseful. He can’t have meant to hit her. He said so himself - it was her fault, for talking about Torrhen and getting him angry. She’s the one who thought it would be a good idea to keep acting like it was fine to talk to Torrhen, to work with him in class. It is her fault - she knew Joffrey wouldn’t like it.

She can’t sit through this class, not with Margaery right there, her presence taunting Sansa. “Mrs. Cailin,” she calls, raising her hand, “I feel really sick. Can I go to the maester’s office?”

“Of course, dear,” the kindly old choir teacher says with a friendly smile for Sansa as she writes out a hall pass. “Here you are. I hope you feel better.”

“Thank you,” Sansa replies, feeling her stomach roil - both from the lie (she hates lying) and from what happened. She’s still so confused. It doesn’t make sense that Joffrey would do that! If you love someone, you’re not supposed to hurt them. He hasn’t said that he loves her (though neither has she said so to him), but she knows that he must. She does love him, after all.

Except… she doesn’t love him so much anymore, she realizes, sitting down in a stairwell, biting her lip. Not now. She’s liked him less and less over the months they’ve been together, with each disparaging comment he makes about the North, with each dig at her family, with each afternoon she has to tell Cella they can’t hang out, because she’s with Joffrey. It’s terrible, she knows, but… She tries to say it aloud: “I love- I love J- I lo-” The third time her throat seizes around the words, she bursts into tears and buries her head in her hands. She doesn’t love him anymore. She really, really doesn’t.

Oh, why didn’t she take Margaery’s offer? She can’t break up with Joffrey. He won’t let her go, she knows that much already. He won’t let her go, so there’s no way the relationship is ending unless he’s the one to end it. But how can she get him to break up with her?

She can’t go back to Margaery and ask for her help now. Not now, when she’s been proven wrong, the very day after she protested to Margaery how much she loved Joffrey. But what else can she do?

Sighing, she tilts her head back and wipes at her eyes, realizing she’ll have to go to one of the bathrooms. Her makeup is ruined, of course. Standing, she walks over to the nearest bathroom and wets a paper towel to wipe at her smudged makeup. It doesn’t help much, though - she mostly uses waterproof makeup, on account of how often it rains and snows here. Non-waterproof makeup is just a bad idea. Unfortunately, today it’s not doing her any favors.

As she swipes the paper towel below her eyes, she thinks about the situation with Joffrey. Maybe it’ll get better. Certainly he’ll never hit her again. He didn’t mean to, and he was so horrified, there’s no way he’ll do it again. Doesn’t she owe it to the Sansa who fell in love with Joffrey to try to make this work?

It takes her a while to fix her makeup, and by now, the class period is almost over. Time to go to Textiles with Cella, who’s too perceptive for Sansa’s good right now. She’ll be able to sniff out in a second that Sansa’s upset, that she’s been crying.

And of course she does - “What’s wrong, Sans? What happened?” Cella asks, touching her shoulder as Sansa sits down beside her. 

“Nothing,” Sansa mutters, looking at the floor and trying to think fast. What excuse can she come up with that Cella will buy?

Cella gives her the best don’t-even-try-that look apart from her own mother’s and says, “What happened?”

With a sigh, Sansa opens her mouth - and lies. “One of the older girls in the choir cornered me in the bathroom,” she tells Cella. “She was… she was horrible to me.” Even though she’s now quite certain that Margaery had actually meant to be helpful, at the time she had thought it was horrible, so this is not quite exactly a lie, Sansa tells herself. “She said nasty things about me and Joffrey, and…” here she trails off, unsure where to take this, unsure what Cella might believe. So far it has all been a slight variant on the truth, but if she goes any farther she’ll be making things up out of whole cloth (as Mum would say).

“Oh, Sans,” Cella sighs, pulling her into a hug that has Sansa wanting to cry all over again. Cella is the best friend she could ask for, and now she’s lying to her for Joffrey. In this moment, more than any other, more than the moments after he hit her, even, she hates him. She shouldn’t be lying to Cella. “We’ll talk about it after class, OK?” she says as Septa Mordane stands up and calls the classroom to order.

An hour of embroidery later, Sansa feels her phone buzz and looks at it to see a message from Joffrey: Meet me at my car. She sighs.

“What is it now?” Cella asks, a gentle tease. “Who’s that from?”

“It’s from Joffrey,” she says. “He wants to leave now.”

Cella purses her lips. “Well, he can just wait,” she grumbles. “I need to talk to you.”

Sansa smiles wanly at her and shakes her head. “No, I’ll just go. We can talk later, OK, Cella?” Stuffing her embroidery bag back into her backpack, she makes for the door and hurries to where she knows Joffrey is parked.

“What took so bloody long?” he demands when she opens the passenger door. “I’ve been waiting for ages.”

“Sorry,” she mumbles, ducking her head and putting her backpack at her feet. “Cella wanted to talk after class.”

He makes a frustrated huffing noise. “Ugh. Don’t do it again.”

“I won’t,” she promises quietly, pressing her lips together, sneaking looks at him as he pulls out of the school parking lot just a little faster than Robb would - than is really safe. If it was Robb driving, she would say something, but this is Joffrey. And after what happened at lunchtime today, she doesn’t want to take the risk of him hitting her again.

“Why so quiet today?” Joffrey asks mockingly when they get up to his room. She flinches and pulls away from him, and his grip on her wrist tightens. “What’s wrong with you?” he demands. 

“I- I-” She looks down at the floor and wraps her arms around her middle. “Joffrey…”

He glares at her, storming across the room and scowling out the window. “Come here,” he demands, not looking back at her; she doesn’t want to go, but she daren’t keep away from him. Crossing the room, she slows as she approaches his side, gnawing on her lip and twisting her fingers together. She pauses beside him, swallowing nervously. He gives her a disgusted look and grasps her wrist, squeezing the bones together. “What’s wrong?” he asks cruelly, grip tightening.

“You’re- you’re hurting me, Joffrey,” she gasps, tugging, trying to pull her hand away from his. “Why are you doing this?”

He lifts a hand to her cheek, smirking when she flinches but only stroking his fingertips across her cheekbone. “You kept me waiting after school today,” he says, looking right into her eyes. “Don’t do it again.”

“Cella’s my friend, Joffrey,” she protests. “I doubt it’s the last time she’ll want to talk to me after class.”

His eyes narrow. “Don’t do it again,” he repeats in a hiss. “I expect you to be better.”

“Better how?” she asks, knowing that she’s risking his wrath, but not quite caring. “She’s my friend.”

Before she can blink, even, her cheek is on fire, and Joffrey is glaring at her. “Apologize,” he hisses.

“You just hit me,” she snaps, “and you want me to apologize?”

He hits her again. “Apologize.”

Gritting her teeth, she shakes her head, though the fierce refusal to give in is waning. When he hits her for a third time, she closes her eyes and feels a tear drip down her cheek.

“Do you think I want to do this, Sansa?” Joffrey asks, light fingertips pressing gently where he’s just hit her. “I don’t. But what am I supposed to do? You’re so infuriating.”

“Sorry,” she whispers, knowing he won’t stop until she says it. And maybe it is her fault. She kept on being a brat after he warned her, after all. “It won’t happen again.” She knows it’s not a promise she can really make, but… hopefully he’ll have forgotten about it by the next time Cella wants to talk after class.

“Good girl,” he says, kissing her forehead. “I don’t want to hurt you, Sansa, and you can stop it from happening.”

She nods, wondering how soon she can convince him to let her go home. Maybe she can tell him that she forgot Mum wanted her help with something?

All she knows now, all she’s sure of, is that she won’t be trusting him like this again. Margaery was right. She needs to get away from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from 'Samson in New Orleans'  
> I'm sorry! It needed to happen, though, and Joffrey does not have anything happy coming his way.  
> To everyone who has commented - thank you, thank you, thank you. I appreciate your words so much. To those of you who are following this, I kind of can't believe there are so many of you, and I understand if this is going in a direction that it didn't seem like it would.  
> I hope this chapter made you feel things! (tbh, with my depression, I mostly don't feel things without fiction as an aid... :/ )  
> It is a privilege to get to write this, and I still find it amazing that so many people are reading it. Thank you.


	11. they were trying to escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaery tries again!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for discussion of physical/emotional abuse

When Margaery appears in the mirror behind her again, Sansa just sighs. “What do you want, Margaery?” she asks tiredly. 

“You look worse,” Margaery says. “Has something happened? Have you changed your mind?”

Shaking her head, Sansa steps away from the sink and dries her hands. “I’m fine,” she says. If Joffrey hit her, he’d probably hit Margaery, too. She doesn’t want that for anyone. At least this way, she can feel a little bit like she’s protecting someone.

“Sansa,” Margaery says, grasping her shoulder and spinning her around. “What happened?”

“I was wrong,” Sansa tells the older girl dully. “About him not hitting me.”

“Oh, sweet girl, no,” Margaery gasps. “When?” She lifts a hand to Sansa’s cheek. “Let me guess — it was last week, when you told Mrs. Cailin that you felt sick?” 

Sansa just nods, not sure what to say.

Margaery pulls her into a gentle hug. “I don’t want this for you, Sansa,” she says. “Please let me help you.”

“You want to date him?” Sansa asks, disbelieving. “After what I’ve just told you? Are you crazy?”

Shaking her head, the brunette says, “No, not crazy. But Joffrey is in line to become the president after his uncle, since Stannis only has a daughter.”

“Political power?” Sansa asks with a frown. “You’d put up with- with Joffrey for that?”

Margaery laughs. “I’d be able to influence things,” she says. “And…”

Shaking her head, Sansa says, “That doesn’t seem like enough of a reason.”

“My reasons are my own, sweet girl,” Margaery says. “But I do have more practice getting people to behave the way I want them to. I could probably keep him from doing anything to harm me.”

“And you’d risk your safety on ‘probably’?” Sansa asks. “Why, Margaery?”

“I’d be like a queen,” the older girl says with a faint smile. “Don’t tell me the thought never crossed your mind.”

It had. Telling Margaery that it hadn’t would be a lie. So she just shrugs. “Queenship has no appeal for me, not now,” she says. “Not if Joffrey is what comes with it.”

Nodding, Margaery steps toward Sansa and asks, “Do you want me to do this? Get Joffrey away from you?”

“Not if it costs you your safety,” Sansa says.

“I can take care of myself,” Margaery says. “I appreciate your concern, though.”

“Then yes,” Sansa says, swallowing, biting her lip, “I’d like you to do it.”

Margaery grins, bright and brilliant, and throws her arms around Sansa. “Thank you, Sansa!” she murmurs into her ear. “Thank you for letting me do this for you.”

“It’s no trouble,” Sansa tells her, wrapping her arms around the older girl in return. “But really, if you want to back out at any point, tell me, and we can call it off.”

“Thank you,” Margaery says. “That won’t happen, though.”

“Still.” Sansa casts a worried gaze at her. 

With a nod, Margaery says, “Let’s talk logistics.”

Sansa winces. “We really should get back to choir,” she says, a little half-heartedly.

“No, you’re right,” the older girl says with a groan. “Here, give me your phone.” When Sansa hands it over, unlocked, Margaery taps out a quick text and passes the phone back to her. “Let’s meet after school. You can-”

“Joffrey doesn’t like me spending time with other people after school,” Sansa says with a grimace. A slow, sly grin curls across Margaery’s face.

“Let me handle Joffrey,” she says.

And she does. When they meet Joff at his car and he asks who she’s brought with her, all Margaery has to say is that they’ll be working on stuff for choir together. Joffrey waves them away with a disgusted look on his face and a menacing reminder of, “Tomorrow,” with his eyes boring into Sansa. She nods, smiles a little shakily at him, and lets Margaery steer her away from him.

“Hey, wolflet!” she hears, and turns to see Robb, Jon, and Cella all looking askance at Margaery’s arm draped carelessly around her shoulders. “Who’s this?”

Sansa gives her brother an unimpressed look — Margaery’s in his year, and she’s one of the most popular and friendly senior girls — and Margaery says, sounding highly amused, “I’m offended, Stark, truly I am, that you don’t remember me.”

Sansa snorts. “Margaery and I are going to her house to work on some stuff for choir,” she tells them. “I’m not really sure how long I’ll be there.” She throws Margaery a questioning look.

“It may be a while,” the older girl says with a sweet smile. “There are quite a few songs to get through, and I want to try teaching this one here,” she squeezes Sansa’s shoulder, “the descant part for a few of them.”

Sansa turns, eyes wide, and blinks up at her. “You do?” she asks.

“I’ve heard your voice, honey,” Margaery tells her. “It’s gorgeous, and you definitely have the range for a descant part. And besides, if I teach it to you, Mrs. Cailin doesn’t have to. And when I tell her how fabulously you’ve learned it, she’ll definitely tap you for some solos in the end of year concert.”

That sounds amazing — and a little too good to be true. She smiles uncertainly at Margaery, who grins back at her.

“Wow, wolflet, that’s great!” Robb says. “We’ll still see you for dinner, though, right? I think Aunt Lya is coming again.”

“Then definitely,” Sansa tells her brother, just as Margaery says, “We’ll have to see.”

The two girls look at each other. “I missed the last time Aunt Lya came to dinner,” Sansa tells Margaery, lips twisting a little sadly. Despite the uncomfortable start to their acquaintanceship, she quite likes the older girl and would love to get to have dinner with her.

“In that case, you do definitely need to be home for dinner,” Margaery agrees. “If we’re not done by the time you need to be home by, we can just meet again sometime.”

Sansa grins. “I would love that.”

Giggling, Margaery says, “Well, I’ll do my best to drag things out as long as possible, then.”

Waving at Robb and Jon and Cella, Sansa lets Margaery turn her around and steer her towards a powder-blue convertible. “This is your car?” Sansa asks. “It’s beautiful.”

“Thanks!” Margaery all but sings. “It was a gift from my brother Loras. He’s a freshman in college this year, in the Reach.”

“You must miss him a lot,” Sansa says with a tightness in her throat.

“I do.” Margaery nods. “I love him dearly.” Reversing out of the parking space, she says, “You must be dreading next year.”

Sansa frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Robb,” Margaery says. “He’ll be going to college next year, too. What are you going to do?”

“Oh, Robb’s planning on going to Northern University,” Sansa tells her. “He’ll be less than an hour away.”

“That’s really wonderful, Sansa,” Margaery says. “You’ll probably see him a lot, then.”

“Hopefully,” she replies with a smile, feeling more at ease in this moment than she has for the last two months. The song on the radio changes, and both girls squeal excitedly and start singing along, Margaery turning the volume up louder than she thinks Robb ever has, as they practically have to shout to hear themselves over the radio.

This takes them all the way to a posh-looking house that’s only a block or so away from the house Cella’s family lived in for most of grade school and middle school. “Home sweet home,” Margaery says, rolling her eyes a little.

“You don’t like it?” Sansa asks.

The older girl shrugs. “It’s fine, and my grandmother lives here with us, since she doesn’t trust my father with our primary education. She’s wonderful, you’ll love her.”

“But?”

Margaery laughs. “You’re perceptive,” she says. “And blunt.” Sansa blushes, looks at the ground; Margaery reaches over and tips her chin back up with light fingertips. “It’s not a bad thing, sweet girl,” she says as she opens the front door, “only probably not so helpful with Joffrey.”

Sansa snorts. “No, it’s definitely not.”

“To answer your question, though,”she says, “It’s always cold up here, even in the Summer, which this definitely is not.”

“No, it isn’t,” Sansa agrees. “It’s a lot warmer down in the Reach, isn’t it?”

Nodding, Margaery indicates a spot for Sansa to set down her backpack. “I think Grandmother is in the music room,” she says. “I’m so looking forward to you meeting her.”

She smiles nervously as Margaery leads her through a succession of doors and hallways and rooms, until finally they are before another closed door that Margaery throws open eagerly.

“Grandmother!” she calls, sounding more excited than Sansa has heard her. “I brought Sansa over!”

There is an older lady sitting at the table that is set off to the side of the room, lifting a delicate cup of tea to her lips. “Wonderful,” she says, a little dryly, making Sansa’s brows furrow with sudden concern. “Welcome, child,” the lady says, lifting a hand to Sansa’s cheek.

“Sansa, this is my grandmother, Olenna Tyrell,” Margaery says from behind her.

“You take after your mother,” Mrs. Tyrell pronounces. “You look near-exactly as she did at your age, you know, my dear. I think your hair may be longer, but other than that, the exact same.”

“Thank you?” Sansa replies, unsure if it is a compliment; it was delivered so matter-of-factly.

Mrs. Tyrell laughs. “Call me Olenna, child,” she says. “It is good to meet you; my Margaery has told me much of you over the last months.”

“We really aren’t here to work on singing,” Sansa says slowly as she eyes the teapot and two other cups at the table’s two other chairs. “Are we?”

“No.” Margaery shakes her head. “No, we aren’t. I wanted to work out a timeline with you, for my seduction of Joffrey.” She says it so nonchalantly in front of her grandmother that Sansa has to restrain herself from gaping. She hadn’t realized that anyone else was in on this little scheme; her gaze flicks between Margaery and her grandmother several times in the span of a second.

“I despise seeing people mistreated, my dear,” Olenna says. “And from what Margaery tells me, you have been.”

“Yes,” she agrees. “He- last week, he hit me, twice. Once after lunch and once after school, on the same day. It wasn’t… The first one I could have forgiven, but not the second. I have seen the right kind of relationship, in my parents’ marriage, too much to think that what he did was acceptable.” 

“Indeed,” Olenna says with pursed lips.” It is not acceptable under any circumstances.”

“But you’re going to let Margaery date him?” Sansa asks, feeling very confused. Olenna seems very fond of Margaery, who, in turn, seems very fond of her. So why would she allow her granddaughter to date someone she knows for a fact might abuse her — indeed, would very nearly certainly do so! —?

Olenna snorts delicately. “My dear,” she says, “Margaery’s actions are her own. I am merely acting to keep her as safe as possible.”

Brows drawing together, Sansa tries to puzzle out what this means.

Olenna opens her mouth, but Margaery cuts her off with, “Grandmother, do we have any of those lovely tea cakes left?”

“I believe we do,” Olenna says. “Shall we have the maid fetch some for us?”

“Yes, let’s,” Margaery replies, reaching for the phone that Sansa hadn’t noticed on the table — it is behind the teapot, and she’s sitting so the teapot is directly between her and the phone — and once she’s passed on the message, they chat about light topics until the tea-cakes arrive. 

Sansa takes one, smiling at the lavender buds baked into the little cakes, and feels her eyes go wide at the taste of her favorite fruit. “Oh, these are little lemon-cakes!” she cries, delighted. “How did you know?”

Margaery smiles mysteriously. “I notice things,” she says with a little shrug, watching Sansa eat the lemon-cake with a soft smile that would utterly fail at making her feel self-conscious — if it was trying to, which Sansa knows somehow that it is not.

Once Sansa has eaten three of the lemon-cakes, Margaery takes her hand, and Olenna speaks. “How attached to you is Joffrey, do you think?” she asks. 

“What do you mean?” Sansa asks.

“Would he cheat on you, do you think?” Margaery translates.

Pressing her lips together for a long moment, Sansa says, “I would like to think that he would not. But yes, I think he would.” She takes her lower lip between her teeth and bites down hard on it, willing away the tears that have sprung to her eyes at the realization that at only fourteen years old, she has had her confidence in the faithfulness of men in relationships corroded by Joffrey.

“Oh, sweet girl,” Margaery says, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “This is all up to you, all right? He’s taken away your power, your choices, and I swear to you, he will pay for it. Every choice in how we do this is up to you.” She sees Olenna give Margaery a glance that looks almost amused at the words, and wonders at it. “Would you like to start this right away, or would you like to wait for a little while?”

“Now,” Sansa says. “I want him out of my life. Or as much as he can be, being my best friend’s brother, and the son of one of my father’s best friends.”

Margaery nods. “We can start tomorrow. Would you like me to do it quickly, slowly, or somewhere in between?”

Tilting her head as she considers, Sansa asks, “How long would slow be, and how fast would quick be?”

Laughs echo between the two Tyrells. “I think I could do it in a week, maybe a week and a half,” Margaery says, “if I was being really obvious about it. But that would be really noticeable, so I do think it might be wiser to do something a bit longer. Slow would be more like two to three months of very slow seduction, of getting him to pull farther and farther away from you.”

“Oh, gods,” Sansa groans, “I don’t think I can wait that long. Could we do maybe five or six weeks?”

“Absolutely,” Margaery tells her. “You want it done by the Turning of the Year holidays?”

Sansa hesitates for a long moment, deliberating, before she nods, once, decisive. “Before the school break starts would be best, I think.”

“All right,” says Olenna, who has kept silent thus far through this frankly absurd — _incredible_ — conversation between Sansa and her granddaughter. “So now we reach how to achieve this goal.”

“It might be easiest,” Margaery says, sounding a bit regretful, looking a bit sheepish, “if we became closer friends, and if you brought me along on as much of your time with Joffrey as possible.” She squeezes Sansa’s hand. “I’m sorry about that. I wouldn’t expect us to actually become friends, although I wouldn’t be opposed to it.”

“I think I’d like to be friends with you,” Sansa admits, a little shyly. “And…” — she looks down — “do you think we could actually work on stuff for choir? I do love to sing, and your voice is so beautiful.”

“Thank you,” the brunette says with a smile and a little giggle. “And I would absolutely love to work on choir stuff with you.”

“Yes, yes,” Olenna says, “but let’s get back to the point, girls.” She sounds a touch frustrated, and one eyebrow is raised when the two girls look at her.

Margaery rolls her eyes a little dramatically and says, “Yes, Grandmother. So, Sansa, does it sound good to you for me to make friends with you and sort of insert myself into more and more of your time with Joffrey, and then kind of start to monopolize him and horn you out a little, until you’re completely out of his clutches?”

Sansa lets a slow, (almost) dark smile curl across her lips, like the one she saw Margaery do earlier. “That sounds wonderful.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from 'Almost Like the Blues'  
> Friendly reminder that in this Westeros, the presidency is basically a monarchy, and girls can't inherit.  
> Thanks so much to everyone who has commented on and kudosed and bookmarked and followed this!! I appreciate it so much.  
> I really love Margaery in this - and Olenna! (Do you think Sansa knows what she's getting into?)  
> Love to all you silent readers, too!! <3 <3 <3 I totally can't believe that this story has as many hits as it does...  
> (Also - it snowed today where I live!!!! I am _so_ excited, y'all. Snow is one of my favorite things ever.)


	12. that don't mean it's light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margaery begins her offensive. Jon gets curious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally more actual Jonsa interaction!!

Over the next several days, Sansa and Margaery meet every day for choir practice, and find that they share a love for the same old ballads and modern pop songs. On Wednesday, Sansa invites Margaery to sit with her and Joffrey at lunch, and makes a pouty face at Joffrey until he agrees, then kisses him (just a peck, though, because she can barely stand the feel of his lips on her now) quickly when he agrees. Margaery becomes a fixture at their lunch table over the next week. She flirts with all of the boys, of whom only Joffrey has a girlfriend, for a solid week before she begins to shift her attentions towards Joffrey. Sansa invites her along to Joffrey’s when they go to study after school — finals are coming up, after all, and Margaery has taken almost all of the classes both of them are in right now.

During these ‘study sessions’, Margaery begins to work her magic on Joffrey, giving him flirty looks when Sansa isn’t looking and approaching him subtly when Sansa goes down to the kitchen for some tea in a prearranged move.

Sansa tends to dress more conservatively than Margaery does, but the latter steps up her game and chooses outfits that seem designed to show as much skin as possible while still following the school dress code (because they are). She has to hide the smirks that rise to her mouth as she watches, furtively, as Joffrey looks at Margaery with ill-concealed lust on his face. For several days, he pressures her even more to have sex with him, but at least in this she can stand up to him. She’s too young, she doesn’t feel ready… she has a list of excuses as long as her arm (that Margaery helped her write, and it is actually as long as her arm — they measured). And then the pressure drops off, presumably because Joffrey has realized that he won’t be getting her to give in any time soon and will surely have better luck with Margaery.

At first, when the older girl brought up the subject of sex in their planning session, Sansa had blushed bright red and refused to think about it, but Olenna talked her ‘round to the idea. Besides, she’s grateful to get Joffrey’s attention away from her. Now, as she watches Margaery looking seductively at Joffrey and nibbling on the end of her pencil, she has to suppress a grin.

Instead, she groans a little. “Marg?” She got permission to use the nickname in the first week of their friendship, their alliance, their shared plan, and has used it liberally since.

“Yeah?” Margaery says, only looking away from Joffrey after a long moment. “What’s up, Sansa?”

“I’m not feeling so good,” Sansa tells her. “I’m going to go home.”

“Do you need me to drive you?” she asks.

“No, I texted Robb,” Sansa says. “He’s on his way to pick me up.” Well, sort of - Robb texted her that he sent a deputy (Jon), because he’s not feeling too great, either.

“You’re leaving?” Joffrey looks away from Margaery to give her a warning glare.

“I didn’t want to bother either of you,” Sansa says, twisting her face into an apologetic look. “You both need to study, still, and I do feel prepared for my tests. And he’s almost here.” A text alert lights up her phone, and she says, “Actually, he just got here.” She stands and shoulders her backpack, the movement slowing when she notices Joffrey begin to rise, too.

“Joff, you don’t need to go downstairs with her,” Margaery laughs. “I think she can probably find her way to the front door without getting lost after all the times she’s been here.”

Sansa just raises a hand in a little wave and leaves the room before Joffrey can come up with any arguments.

She doesn’t see anyone else on her way through the house, and breathes a sigh of relief when she opens the front door that Joffrey’s window does not look out over the driveway. Jon is standing, leaning against the passenger door of the car. “Hey Sansa,” he calls when he sees her.

“Hey Jon,” she replies with a smile that comes far more easily with him that it has with Joffrey since the first week.

“Where’s Joffrey?” Jon asks, sounding a little irritated.

She raises her eyebrows and says, “Up in his room, still. With Marg.”

Jon does a double take. “With- with Margaery? Margaery Tyrell?”

“Do you know some other Margaery?” she asks, shaking her head at him as she climbs into the passenger seat, as Jon walks around the car and starts it up, pulls out of the Baratheons’ drive.

“She and Joffrey are alone in his bedroom?” Jon repeats.

Sansa rolls her eyes dramatically. “Gods, Jon, isn’t that what I just said?”

“Alone?” Jon repeats. “In his bedroom?”

Giving him a skeptical, bemused look, she says, “Yes, Jon,” slowly and like she is speaking to a child.

Gaping at her a little (until she reminds him to keep his eyes on the road), he says, “Have you seen what she’s been wearing recently? Sansa, you’re kidding, right? There’s no way Joffrey’s not taking advantage of being alone with her… in a bedroom.”

Rolling her eyes again, she says, “Jon, Margaery is my friend.”

“And?” Jon asks, making his your-point-is-what face.

Narrowing her eyes sarcastically at him, she adds, “She wouldn’t go behind my back like that, Jon.” (It’s not technically a lie. Margaery is her friend, and she isn’t going behind Sansa’s back, although she most likely is at the very least kissing Joffrey. The plan is for them to sleep together tonight and for Margaery to freak out a little afterward. She practiced her freak-out for the benefit of Sansa and Olenna, who were both in gales of laughter at her overwrought face and dramatic speech. Olenna judged that Joffrey is enough of a dumb teenage boy to fall for it, though, which Sansa seconded thoroughly — Joffrey may be cruel, but he’s not the smart kind of cruel.) “They’re studying, Jon,” she tells him in a tone that brooks no refusals. He looks like he dearly wants to say something more, but she glares at him until he subsides. “She wouldn’t go behind my back like that,” Sansa repeats, tone final.

“Fine,” he mutters, though he clearly doesn’t agree with her. She tries not to roll her eyes again and almost even succeeds. Silence reigns in the car until it pulls up to Winterfell.

“Are you staying tonight?” Sansa asks, biting her lip as she turns to look at him.

He snorts. “Well, Robb isn’t feeling well enough to drive, so yes.”

“You know that if you really want to go home, one of my parents will drive you,” she says with a little smile. “But we’d love for you to stay.”

“All of you?” he asks, turning to her with an intense look in his eyes that she cannot decipher. When she just stares at him with wide, questioning eyes, he adds, “Even you?”

“Of course,” she whispers. “Of course I want you to stay.”

Jon’s jaw tightens; he gets out of the car and shuts the door more aggressively than he usually would. It makes her jump in her seat, tensing like she’s with Joffrey until she forces herself to take a long, deep breath. A tap on her window makes her startle again, but it’s only Jon, who asks, “You OK?”

She nods. “Yeah. I’m fine.” She doesn’t want to admit anything about Joffrey to him. He already thought she was an idiot at the beginning of the year; this will only confirm it for him. She doesn’t want to do that.

As she lifts her backpack to her shoulder, Jon takes it from her, slinging it over his own shoulder and pulling her sideways into a loose semblance of a hug, leading her up the front steps. When they get inside, he set her backpack down alongside all the others, and she pauses, thinking of something else that started at the beginning of the year.

“Jon?” she says. “What was the muffin thing, at the beginning of the year?”

It’s not exactly a surprise when he turns bright red, sputters, shakes his head, though she is a little disappointed when he flatly refuses to tell her. She tries to pester him for a while, but he waves her off (with a bit of a glare) and goes upstairs to Robb’s room. It’s late - she had dinner with Margaery and Joffrey a few hours ago - and since her homework and studying is all done, she should probably go to bed. The only problem is that she’s not tired - at all. The thought of Margaery… doing things with Joffrey won’t leave her alone, and it makes her feel a little sick. Not that she’s annoyed in any way that her boyfriend is technically cheating on her (never mind that she arranged for it to happen…) - it’s more that the idea of Margaery having to get so close to Joffrey is sickening, because she has come to see the older girl as a close friend, and she wouldn’t wish Joffrey on an enemy.

Sighing, she pads back down to the kitchen, Lady in tow, to make herself some chamomile tea. She doesn’t want to have to be thinking about this any more.

When she reaches the kitchen, though, a dark figure is already setting the electric kettle to boil. Her first thought is ‘intruder,’ but it’s just Jon. “Gods, Jon,” she mutters, making him jump in surprise of his own. “You scared me.”

“I scared you?” he grumbles good-naturedly. She realizes, belatedly, that he’s not wearing a shirt, just flannel pajama pants. The sight makes her blink several times, a little confused at the feelings stirring in her gut.

“I wasn’t expecting anyone to be down here,” she tells him. “I was having trouble sleeping.”

“Yeah, me too,” he tells her. “Chamomile?” When she nods, he turns to the cupboard and pulls down the box of teabags. “You like two, right?” he asks. “For chamomile?”

She blinks at him again, confused once more. “How do you know that?” she asks, then blushes at how rude it sounds. “Sorry, I-”

With a shrug, he says, “I guess I just pay attention. I mean, Robb knows that, right?”

Frowning, she tips her head to one side and thinks. Does Robb know that she prefers two teabags for her chamomile tea when she’s having trouble sleeping? “He does,” she says eventually, “but I don’t think Mum or Dad do.”

Jon shrugs again. “I’m not going to use my knowledge for nefarious purposes, I promise.” Leaning back against the counter, he crosses his arms across his chest and looks at her a little strangely. It’s only then that she realizes that her sweater - the one she pulled on over the sports bra and shorts she sleeps in - has slipped down her shoulder. She tugs it up a little self-consciously and stares at the floor.

“Thanks,” she mumbles.

“I don’t want to upset you,” Jon says, when the water is bubbling, though not vigorously enough quite yet, “but- are you sure, about Margaery and Joffrey? Only I’ve noticed that she seems to be flirting with him quite a bit this past week.”

“Watching her, are you?” Sansa asks, a little waspishly, feeling oddly annoyed at the thought.

Jon’s brow furrows. “No,” he says. “I wasn’t watching her.”

What does that mean, she wonders, feeling more annoyed. “Why do you care?” she asks instead, trying for an uncaring tone of voice but coming over tired instead. “I thought you all hated Joffrey.”

“I don’t care about him at all,” Jon says. “But you don’t deserve to be cheated on.”

“Is that what you think is going on?” she asks, amusement bubbling up. She tries to suppress the giggles, but they won’t go away, and they spill out of her just as the water boils and the kettle clicks off.

“Are you OK?” Jon asks, pouring the hot water into large mugs for each of them - hers only two-thirds full, and when he walks over to the fridge she realizes that he knows exactly how she likes her chamomile tea (with milk to cool it down, so she can drink it right away).

He passes her the mug; she takes a sip and smiles at him. “Perfect,” she says, eyes catching on the way he looks down and cradles his own mug in his hands (so much larger than Joffrey’s, she notices, then scoffs at herself internally for the noticing). “Thank you.”

“It’s nothing,” he tells her, but she shakes her head.

“It’s not nothing, Jon.” His eyes burn into hers for a long moment after she speaks, until she drops her eyes to the milky tea in her mug. A few minutes later, when half her tea is gone (when he’s just started to gulp his down, after he burned his tongue a little trying to drink it right away), she asks, “What’s keeping you up?”

He sighs. “It’s not really important.” When she frowns at him and stares expectantly, he huffs another sigh and says, “I was thinking about Cella’s dad, actually.”

Sansa’s brows draw together. “What do you mean?”

“Mum met up with him last week,” he tells her. “They spent a while catching up. He’s coming over for tea this weekend, and she wants to introduce me to him.”

“And you don’t want to meet him?” Sansa asks. “He’s quite nice, you know. He and Dad were really good friends when they were young, and we visited him a few times in King’s Landing when we were kids.”

“No, it’s- I do want to meet him,” Jon tells her. “I just… I don’t know what he’s expecting, and…” He grimaces. “I don’t want him to be reminded of my dad.”

“Oh, Jon,” she sighs, setting her mostly-empty mug of tea down on the counter and slipping her arms around him. “I don’t think he will be. You look so much like your mum, and… I mean, I don’t know all that much about your dad, but from what little I do know, you’re nothing like him.”

“You don’t know anything about my father,” Jon mutters. “How would you have any idea?”

Tilting her head back to look up into Jon’s eyes, she says, “Because you’re too much like my dad for you to be anything like- like yours.” Tightening her arms around him, she winces at how weak her last words sounded - but she doesn’t think Jon has any idea that Cella told her about his father, the day after Aunt Lya talked to them both about him. And if he doesn’t know, she doesn’t want to be the one to tell him.

“Thanks, Sansa,” Jon mutters, his own arms tightening around her in turn. “You don’t have to say this stuff to make me feel better, though.”

Sansa pulls back and rolls her eyes at him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she grumbles good-naturedly. “I am definitely not just saying all of this to make you feel better. It happens to be true.”

Jon laughs and lets her go, draining the last of his tea and setting both of their mugs in the sink. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go back up to bed.” His face reddens a little, oddly, and Sansa wonders why, though she nods instead of asking him about it.

“Good night,” she murmurs to him at the top of the stairs, where he turns one way for Robb’s room and she turns the other for her own.

“Good night, Sansa,” he replies. “Sleep well.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from 'A Street'  
> Does actual Jonsa interaction help? I hope it does!!  
> Tell me what you think!! (Or don't - I won't hold it against you :P I understand not having the energy to write comments...)  
> I hope your week is going well so far! I have class shortly, and I wanted to get this posted before I go so I can help my roomie with Taekwando when I get back :D


	13. i was bound to a burden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Plan is revealed to Cella.

Margaery is grinning when they meet at her locker the next morning.

“Do I even need to ask how it went?” Sansa asks quietly, leaning in to hug Margaery.

“Brilliantly,” the older girl replies with a wicked smile. “He thinks I’m _horrified_ , and I’ll avoid him for a few days to really sell it.”

Sansa’s grin mirrors Margaery’s. “So should we do some more ‘choir stuff’ this afternoon? I’d…” she blushes. “I’d like to hear more.”

“Sansa!” gasps Margaery, sounding _very scandalized_. Sansa just laughs. “Grandmother cornered me when I got home,” she adds, now only sounding highly amused. “I told her that she had to wait until you came over before I’d give her any gossip.” She makes a face. “One thing I’ll tell you now, though - it was clearly the first time he’d done anything of the sort.”

Sansa stifles a snort, feeling vaguely horrified (but mostly thinking that Margaery is hilarious). “You’re _awful_ , Marg,” she says. “And now I really should dash off - I don’t want to be late to History.”

Margaery smirks. “Ah, the perks of having a first-period TA position,” she sighs happily. “Mr. Risley lets me get away with everything.”

Sansa sticks her tongue out at Margaery and turns, weaves her way down the hall towards her classroom. She does rather envy Margaery’s TA job, since it apparently means she can be as late to her first period as she wants. Mostly she just wants to get to History as soon as possible, so that it will be over as soon as possible. Despite the Ancient Valyrian hairstyling she learned over the summer, history really holds no appeal for her - and Westerosi history even less so. At least learning about the Doom of Valyria had been interesting.

“Hey,” Cella says, from her usual seat beside Sansa’s. “You’re almost late.”

“I just wanted to say hi to Marg when I saw her in the hallway,” Sansa tells her best friend, whose lips purse as she stares straight ahead, not really looking at anything, Sansa thinks.

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with her,” Cella says, her voice carefully neutral in a way Sansa hates. “Is it really just Choir stuff you’re working on?”

“A lot of it is,” Sansa says softly as the bell rings for the start of first period, not wanting to completely outright lie to her best friend. “She’s been helping me study for my other classes, too, though.”

Cella’s lips press together as Ms. Staunton stands from her desk to hover at the front of the room. “And it didn’t occur to you that I might like a little extra help?” she asks in a whisper. No matter how quiet her voice is, though, Sansa can tell that Cella is hurt.

“Later,” she whispers back as Ms. Staunton settles into a continuation of yesterday’s lecture that is sure to be just as dry and boring.

In the hallway, between first and second periods, Sansa says, “Joffrey studies with us whenever we’re studying for other classes. Margaery is actually more helpful to him, really, since she’s taken the classes he’s in more recently.”

“Jon texted me late last night,” Cella says suddenly, grabbing for Sansa’s elbow and pulling her to a stop in the middle of the hall. “It wasn’t the clearest, but it was something about Joffrey and Margaery being alone in her bedroom?”

Sansa sighs. “Oh, he didn’t,” she mutters, not even bothering to keep her annoyance from her tone. “I felt a little off yesterday, and I was done studying before both of them, and I just wanted to go home. Jon came and picked me up and seemed bizarrely horrified that I trust my boyfriend alone in a room with another girl.” Rolling her eyes, she grimaces internally at having to dissemble. If only Jon hadn’t said anything…

“I mean, I wouldn’t trust him alone in a room with another girl,” Cella mutters, “but you’re his girlfriend, not me. It’s not really up to me, is it?”

Grim smile curling her lips, Sansa replies, “No, not really. Nor is it up to Jon.”

“He worries about you, Sansa,” Cella tells her softly, making Sansa scoff.

“Oh, I’m sure,” she mutters. “But only because he thinks I’m a total idiot who can’t take care of herself. You did hear the way he yelled at me the first day of school, didn’t you?”

Cella’s brows draw together. “He hasn’t apologized for that yet? That seems really unlike him.”

Sansa just shrugs. He did apologize, the day it happened, but he only said that he was sorry for yelling at her, not the _contents_ of his shouts.

“I’ll talk to him,” Cella promises, looking peeved, then adds in a mutter, “honestly, I don’t know _why_ I’m trying to help that boy.”

Sansa frowns in confusion, but second period starts before she can even begin marshaling her thoughts into any semblance of order. At the end of class, though, Cella is back to being stuck on Margaery.

“You weren’t planning to do anything with her this afternoon, were you, Sansa?” she asks, face falling when Sansa stills, gives her an apologetic look. “Sansa, we were going to study High Valyrian!”

Sansa gives Cella a long look, weighing whether or not she can bring Cella in on the plan. “I’ll ask Marg if you can join us this afternoon?” she offers, knowing that it’s not enough. She and Cella have drifted apart since the beginning of the year, and it’s all Sansa’s fault, for taking up with Joffrey and agreeing to this plan with Margaery. “We are going to be studying High Valyrian. Margaery has her big mid-year advanced exam for it on Friday, and ours isn’t until Monday.”

“It’s cruel and unusual punishment to set an exam for a Monday,” Cella groans in complaint about the High Valyrian teacher. “Why? It’s so totally not necessary. We could just do ours on Friday, too, and then we’d have it over and done with.”

Giggling, Sansa asks, “OK, but do you actually feel _ready_ for that test? Because _I_ certainly don’t.”

With another groan, Cella shakes her head and admits that no, she doesn’t feel ready for the test.

“Which is why having someone who’s already taken our level of High Valyrian will be super helpful,” Sansa points out. “And even if Margaery doesn’t want you to study with us, which would surprise me, I can still pass on her tips and tricks.”

“All right,” sighs Cella, even though it is clearly anything but true. “Will I get to see you at lunch, or just from a distance?” She actually sounds bitter now, and it’s not a voice Sansa ever thought to hear from her best friend.

“I left early last night,” she reminds Cella. “Joffrey will want me to have lunch with him today.”

Cella nods resignedly. “What else is new?” she sighs, trying her best to smile at Sansa, though it comes out as more of a grimace.

Joffrey is surprisingly less horrible than he has been in the past several weeks, but she knows better than to fall for it. She’s not going to back out of her plan with Margaery when it’s actually starting to show results. He pales a little when she tells him her plan to study with Margaery after school, and she has to fight the very strong urge to grin in smug satisfaction.

“Are you sure?” Joffrey asks.

Sansa twists her face into a (hopefully) believable expression of doubting confusion. “Why wouldn’t I be?” she asks. “Margaery needs help, too, and helping her will be good for me to study, too.”

Joffrey still looks uneasy, but she gets him to agree for her to study with Margaery - and then lunch is over and it’s time for Choir, the only part of the day where she reliably sees her new friend.

“Hey, Marg,” she says with an easy smile, sitting down next to the older girl. “I was hoping that Cella - Myrcella Baratheon, Joffrey’s sister - could study High Valyrian with us this afternoon?”

Margaery throws her an uncertain look. “Are you sure?” she asks, brow furrowed just slightly. “I mean, I thought we were going to talk about… you know.”

With a nod, Sansa continues, “Yes, that is the plan. I… I want to tell Cella what’s going on. I know she’s worried about me, and I’ve spent so little time with her in the last few months, when we hadn’t seen each other at all for the long break, and I’d like to… I want her to know.”

Margaery takes a deep breath before she replies, “Can I think about it? I’d like to ask my grandmother for her opinion on what to do.”

“Of course,” Sansa says. “Will you be able to know by the end of the school day?” When Margaery nods, she says, “OK, then. Text me when you know so I can tell Cella - you know we have Textiles together next period.”

“Yeah,” the older girl says with a fond smile. “You two have practically identical schedules, except for this period, when she has Drawing and Painting.”

Sansa frowns. “How do you know that?” she asks.

Lips curling into a smile, Margaery says, “I pay attention. I told you, I noticed that you looked… less bright as the year wore on, and now that we’ve got a good start on this plan of ours, you look brighter again.”

“Yeah,” Sansa agrees. “I feel more confident now.” Her smile turns a little tremulous as her eyes sting with tears. “You’ve helped with that so, so much, Marg.”

Margaery slides an arm around her shoulders and tugs Sansa into her side, tilting her head to lay against Sansa’s. “I’m so glad I could help you, sweet girl,” she says, squeezing Sansa’s shoulders gently as she sits back up straight for class to begin.

All through Textiles with Septa Mordane and Cella - and the handful of other girls in the small class (no boys have been interested in taking this class in _decades_ , at least) - Sansa waits nervously for word from Margaery to confirm to Cella that they can both go to Margaery’s house this afternoon. Every little twitch feels like her phone buzzing in her pocket, and she must check it at _least_ six times (while Septa Mordane’s back is turned, obviously) through the hour. But the end of class comes, and _still_ no message from Margaery.

Just as the bell finishes ringing, Sansa’s phone buzzes loudly in her pocket. With a grin, she pulls it out and reads the text: _All good. Grandmother is excited to meet her!_

Looking up from her phone, she grins at Cella’s nervous face and says, “It’s a go!”

“Cool,” Cella says, still sounding a little nervous. “This is going to be interesting.” The mutter, Sansa thinks, was not meant for her ears, but Cella has never been good at talking under her breath.

“It’ll be fine, Cella,” Sansa promises. “Marg is super nice, and they always have the best tea cakes, I swear.”

Giggling, Cella asks, “Even better than your mum’s?”

Sansa tilts her head to one side, then the other. “That’s tough,” she sighs eventually. “I think I might have to come down in favor of the Tyrell’s tea cakes, though.”

“Wow,” Cella gasps theatrically. “I would not have expected that.” Voice turning more serious, she asks, “So, how exactly are two girls just starting to learn the language going to help her study for her High Valyrian test?”

With a shrug, Sansa just says, “I’m not really sure. She said it would help her _and_ us, though, and studying with her in the past has always been helpful.”

Cella nods and sighs a little (again).

“I promise she’ll be nice,” Sansa says. She would insist on it even if Margaery wasn’t that keen on Cella, but the older girl seems charmed at the idea of having both of them over. “We’ll probably just be doing a lot of talking.” Well, that is certainly true, she thinks. It just won’t be about (or in) High Valyrian. For their own exam, Sansa and Cella have to learn a basic timeline of Valyrian history and know how to discuss potential factors for why the dragons became extinct. Margaery doesn’t have to know (much of) the history. At the advanced level, the testing (and instruction) focus on the great works of Valyrian literature, the epics. Sansa would rather be learning more of the Ancient Valyrian hairstyling, though Cella at least appreciates the history.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Cella says with a smile for her, though it seems a little forced; Sansa longs for the days when everything was normal and good and her best friend still felt like she didn’t need to fake a smile for her. “We should go, though, right? Won’t she be waiting?”

Sansa lets out a giggle that morphs into a huge belly laugh before she can help it. “Oh, she doesn’t wait,” Sansa tells Cella. “She’s going to be confronting this boy she kind of likes about whether or not he wants to date her. We have at _least_ another ten minutes to get to the car.”

They spend those precious ten minutes falling back into the easy rhythms of their friendship. Sansa gossiped; Cella’s sweet smile charmed the conceited looks off the face of every boy she passed. When they reached the car, Margaery, too, was just walking up to it. “What took you so long?” the older girl asks, raising an eyebrow when Sansa blushes. She may have caught a glimpse of Jon Snow across the parking lot and stared a little bit (for some reason, he looked better today than usual - and he was usually really good-looking) and gotten gently teased by Cella about it.

“We thought you’d take longer with whats-his-name,” Sansa says, hoping that Margaery won’t give away her lie. She’ll explain when she has a moment alone with Margaery that she wanted to have a few extra minutes with Cella. Margaery will understand. (She hopes.)

“Oh, him?” Margaery replies, looking highly amused. “Yeah, I couldn’t find him after the bell rang.”

“That’s a shame,” Sansa sighs, turning to Cella to ask, “do you want to sit up front or in the backseat?”

“Backseat,” Cella replies, opening the door and climbing into the car. “Your car is beautiful, Margaery,” she says to the older girl, running a hand across the buttery leather that Sansa remembers stroking for a little bit (for several minutes) herself, the first time Margaery drove her.

“Thanks!” Margaery says with a sunny grin, pulling out of the school parking lot. “It was a gift from my brother.” She tosses a look at Sansa over her shoulder - clearly an indication that Sansa is in charge of starting to tell Cella about their plan. But she wants to wait until they’re all at Margaery’s house to tell her best friend, because this _is_ about her brother, and she doesn’t want Cella to freak out on the road. Even if Margaery is a good driver.

“So the plan is to help you review for your High Valyrian exam,” Sansa says. “Do you want to do that first and maybe chat a bit first, or should we chat first and then study?”

Margaery grins at her in the rearview mirror. “Let’s have some tea and chat for a bit first,” she replies. “Grandmother has some of your favorites, Sansa, and we got some strawberry tarts for Cella, too.”

“Since I asked you if she could join us at lunchtime?” Sansa asks, impressed.

“Grandmother texted to tell me we had them just before I got out of class,” Margaery says with another grin.

Cella’s eyes widen in the backseat, and Margaery’s lips curl into a little smile at the sight.

“It’s just Grandmother and I now,” Margaery tells Cella as she pulls into the driveway, “but while they were still in primary school, my brothers all lived here, too.”

“That would be…” Cella’s head tilts to one side. “Loras is the one just older than you, and I know Willas is the oldest. What’s your third brother’s name?”

“Garlan,” Margaery says with a fond smile. “He finished university a few years ago and got married last year. Come on, let’s go in!” She leads them to the room she and Sansa and Mrs. Tyrell - Olenna - always have tea in, calling a greeting to her grandmother as they near the room.

“Margaery,” Olenna says with a quirked eyebrow, “Sansa. And I presume this is the lovely Myrcella Baratheon?”

Cella nods. “It’s nice to meet you again, Mrs. Tyrell,” she says with a slightly shy smile that Sansa completely understands. If Cella has already met Olenna, it’s likely that the snarky woman cowed her a bit; she tends to have that effect on people. Sansa’s only so comfortable with Olenna as she is because of the plan they came up with together.

“And you, Myrcella. Shall we have some tea?” Olenna gestures to the table, which today has four chairs, four settings, though Sansa has only ever seen it with three.

“Yes, let’s,” she replies, sitting down next to Olenna. It’s up to Cella, but she’d guess that her best friend doesn’t want to sit right beside Olenna Tyrell - and she’s right; Cella takes the seat across from Olenna, leaving the last for Margaery. They make light conversation as the tea is poured, and Sansa tries to psych herself up for the task at hand.

“Cella,” she says when there is a lull in the conversation, “I… I asked you to come here under false pretenses. We’re not really here to study with Marg; I need to tell you something.”

“What is it?” Cella asks. “What’s-”

“Joffrey-” Sansa bites her lip _hard_. “He hit me a few weeks ago.”

“He did _what_?” Cella spits, rising to her feet so fast Sansa worries the table will tip over. “I _knew_ it! I _knew_ he would do something like this! Gods! Oh- _Ugh_ \- He’s a despicable little _rat_ , Sansa! Gods, I _hate_ him!”

Margaery laughs. “I thought that would be your reaction, Myrcella,” she says. “Which is why you’re here - Sansa has a little confession to make - and, I suppose, so do I.”

Cella frowns. “What?”

Taking the thread of the story back up, Sansa says, “Margaery approached me in the bathroom during Choir one day, saying that she knew Joffrey was bad for me and that she wanted to help. That was before he hit me, but I’ve realized that he was being emotionally abusive practically from the beginning of our relationship.” She sighs. “Anyways, I refused, because I hadn’t realized yet, but then he hit me, and then Marg came to me again, offering her help. So I agreed.”

“What kind of help?” Cella asks. “And why not just break up with him?”

Margaery makes a face and says, “If she broke up with him - and this _sucks_ , I know it does - he would just become even more obsessed with her, and she would actually be in a lot more danger. Statistically speaking, people in abusive relationships are more likely to be killed when they end the relationship.”

“So Margaery had this brilliant idea,” Sansa says, “to-”

“Seduce Joffrey,” Margaery interrupts with a grin, “although I don’t know how brilliant of an idea it is, Sansa.”

“No, it’s brilliant,” Sansa says with a wide smile of her own. “Joffrey’s been pulling away from me. It’s working.” Turning to Cella, she adds, “The main idea is for him to break up with me, rather than the other way ‘round. Margaery is manipulating him into a relationship with _her_ , which…” she chances a glance at the older girl, “she has her own motivations for.”

Cella frowns again, deeper this time. “Wh- Sans, not that I don’t want you away from Joff, but…”

“It’s working, Cella,” Sansa tells her. “I think you were already in your room by the time I left last night, but Margaery stayed for a while after Jon picked me up-”

“Wait-” Margaery starts, but Cella interrupts her.

“ _Jon_ picked you up?” she demands. “How did that happen?”

Sansa blushes. “That’s not the point, Cella,” she mutters, ducking her head when Margaery gives her a chastising expression.

“It _wasn’t_ the point, but now I’m actually more interested in what happened to _you_ after you left, not me,” the older girl says, raising an eyebrow with a suggestive smirk.

“All that happened was that he made suspicious noises about you staying, Marg,” Sansa grumbles. “I don’t- I think he said something along the lines of ‘you don’t deserve to be cheated on,’ but I’m not sure.”

Margaery rolls her eyes. “Ugh, Sansa, that boy has it bad for you.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Sansa argues. “He’s Robb’s best friend; that’s it - that’s the extent of our relationship.”

Cella and Margaery both sigh and exchange an exasperated look with each other that makes Sansa startle. “Sans…” Cella’s expression turns pained. “You remember what I told you about him? It’s not that I object to you dating _my_ _brother_ \- it’s _Joffrey_ that I have an issue with.”

Margaery and Olenna look confused, but Sansa just presses her lips together and sighs, feeling her throat tighten. “Cella, whenever you and Robb figure things out, we’ll…”

“Sansa, it’s not my place to tell you how Jon feels about you, but I _promise_ he doesn’t think you’re an idiot, no matter what he said on the first day of school.”

“Is _that_ what this is about?” Margaery asks, incredulous. “Sansa, you missed being hit by a car by _inches_!! He was afraid for you!” She rubs her forehead and leans across the table, setting a hand over Sansa’s. “Sweet girl, you know how I told you that fear often manifests as anger?” Her widened eyes tell Sansa that she is waiting for a response; as soon as Sansa nods, Margaery continues, “I’m _sure_ that’s what was going on that day. He probably thought you were about to die, and” - she looks at Cella - “as _I_ have no loyalty to him as a reason to keep his secrets, I have no compunction about telling you that he adores you, and that fear translated into a perfectly natural anger.”

“He does _not_ feel like that about me!” Sansa insists. “Joffrey keeps saying something like that, but he _can’t_!”

Margaery goes pale. “Has Joffrey tried to get you to stay away from Jon?” she asks. When Sansa nods, her face twists into an ugly expression. “Damn it.”

“What?” Sansa asks.

Shaking her head, Margaery says, “Joffrey will flip out if you start seeing Jon.”

“Wait,” Cella says, “aren’t you still technically dating Joffrey?”

“Yes, but even after he breaks up with her, Joffrey will have this weird fixation with her,” Margaery says; “If she and Jon start seeing each other, Joffrey will come unglued.”

Cella makes a face. “How does that make sense? If _they’re_ not dating, why would it matter to him?”

“Because he feels like she belongs to him, and that feeling won’t go away just because I get him to break up with her for me,” Margaery says with a grimace. “I’m sorry, Sansa.”

“There has to be something we could do!” Cella protests. “That’s- It’s so unfair!”

“It is,” Margaery sighs, “but…” Her voice trails off as Olenna leans forward.

“How attached to your older brother are you?” Margaery’s grandmother asks.

Frowning, Cella asks, “What?”

“How attached are you to Joffrey?” Olenna repeats. “It’s a simple question.”

Cella gives her a skeptical look but says, “He’s a sadistic bastard, and he’s been abusing my best friend. If he disappeared tomorrow, I would throw a party.” Her voice is hard.

Unexpectedly, Olenna smiles. “What if he didn’t just disappear?” she asks. “What if he was gone for good?”

Cella raises an eyebrow. “You mean dead?” she asks, a little sarcastically. “I would jump for joy.”

“So if I told you,” Olenna says with a wicked tinge to her words, “that my granddaughter and I have been planning a way to, shall we say, _remove_ him…”

“I would say, how can I help?” Cella replies, sounding bloodthirsty for the first time in all the years Sansa has known her.

She gapes at the three of them - Margaery, Olenna, and Cella, looking like a trio of witches, all leaning in - and says, “You want to _kill_ him?”

“You _don’t_?” Margaery replies archly, a little skeptically. “I know I would.”

“That’s not what I said,” Sansa snaps, “and there’s a big difference between wanting and actually _doing_.”

Margaery laughs. “We didn’t want to tell you, because we didn’t want you to have to lie about it if we got caught,” she says, “but now… Sansa, you won’t have to do anything other than continuing the plan we already have, all right? And we’re so close. You just- we need to wait a bit once Joffrey breaks up with you before he starts openly dating me, and then for a few months after that before we can get rid of him.” She turns to Cella and says, “I slept with Joffrey last night.”

“Eugh,” Cella mutters, face screwing up in disgust. “Margaery, I did not need to know that.”

Laughing again, Margaery says, “He was awful. Good gods, it was really quite bad. I won’t give you any details, but…” She looks at Sansa and wrinkles her nose, making Sansa burst into slightly hysterical giggles.

“So are you in or are you out?” Olenna asks.

“In, absolutely,” Cella says immediately.

Sansa pauses for a long moment, looking around the table at the other three, before finally saying, “Yes. I’m in, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from 'Born in Chains'  
> So... thoughts? I have to admit, I'm super nervous about this chapter - when I was writing it and got towards the end, it kind of took a sharp turn into territory I wasn't planning on. Oops?  
> Also this chapter is significantly longer than my chapters usually are, and it's definitely an anomaly. (i.e. don't expect future chapters to be this long - sorry!)  
> I hope you like this! Again, I'm super nervous about where it went, so please let me know if anything seemed out of character or too weird or something.  
> Also, to clarify Cella's reaction - Joffrey has been bullying her and Tommen since they were really little kids, so she never really liked him in the first place, and now he's hurt her best friend, whom she adores.


	14. i can no longer keep this secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa doesn't have lunch with Joffrey. Tommen is brave. Jon has a bitch fit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for physical abuse: Joffrey hits Sansa once in this chapter (and also there is a bit of general manhandling).

Joffrey has been pulling away from her wonderfully over the past week and a half since Margaery got him in bed. It’s been fantastic, and today she tries her luck at eating lunch with Cella and Robb - and Jon, by default, since he and Robb always have lunch together - since Joffrey has been completely ignoring her at lunchtime.

She makes sure that Robb, still taller than her - though not as much as at the beginning of the year - is sitting between her and Joffrey, though the table is across the lunchroom. He looks around for a few moments at the beginning of lunch, but stops quickly enough when Margaery wiggles her fingers at him as she passes on her way to sit with her friends. His eyes follow Margaery for several long moments, and when he looks away from her, one of his friends asks him a question. He doesn’t keep looking for her, so she figures she’s safe, at least for now.

Robb pulls Jon into a conversation about something that happened in their physics class, and she turns to Cella with a grin. “So, do you think Margaery’s ideas were helpful?” she asks.

“Um…” Cella is giving her a you’re-crazy look, and Sansa shakes her head.

“About our High Valyrian test?”

“Oh. Right. Um, yeah,” she says, sounding a little stilted.

Sansa giggles. “You seemed to like her ideas plenty when we studied with her,” she says, shrugging when Cella’s eyes widen with concern. “Or at least I thought you did…”

“Is this the best place?” Cella demands in a whisper. “Can’t we talk about it later?”

“Joffrey and Marg and I are studying together later,” she says, lips twisting for a moment before she leans over and adds in a whisper, “and after I leave, she’s going to start sweet-talking him into breaking up with me for her.”

Cella smirks, nose wrinkling a little at the thought of Margaery _sweet-talking_ Joffrey, as it always does. It’s an adorable expression, though, so Sansa just grins back at her. “How soon do you think it’ll be?” Cella asks quietly.

“No more than another week or two,” she replies, just as quietly, tensing when an arm drops around her shoulders.

“What are you two conspiring about?” Robb asks in her ear, making her elbow him harshly in the side.

“Nothing,” she grumbles. “Just girl talk. And we’re not _conspiring_ , Robb, don’t be an idiot.”

“Hey!” Robb frowns, but his wrinkled expression fades away in the face of her wide grin. Behind him, Jon is trying to stifle chuckles - and failing miserably. Cella makes an aborted snorting noise behind her, and Sansa bursts into giggles at the mock-wounded look on her brother’s face.

“Oh, Robby, you should see your _face_ ,” she gasps out when she finally stops laughing. “What are you doing after school today?”

Robb opens his mouth, shuts it, looks at Cella, blushes, looks at the floor. “Um…”

Looking between her brother and her best friend, Sansa presses a hand to her mouth to stifle the excited squeal that she can’t hold in and wiggles in her seat. “Oh! This is so exciting!” She leans over and smacks a kiss on Robb’s cheek. “Have fun, you two! What are you planning?”

“We’re just going to the library,” Cella says quietly from behind her, though her smile is like sunlight when she looks up to meet Sansa’s eyes. “We both have homework to do.”

Her grin is wider than it ever has been before, and she looks over at Jon, expecting that he, too, will look at least a little excited, but instead his expression is sad. “Jon?” she asks, eyebrows drawing together. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he mutters, getting up and grabbing his backpack, stalking off away from them. She frowns after him until he reaches the hallway, until she can’t see him any longer.

Looking back to Robb and Cella, she catches them exchanging an expression she can’t quite parse. “What’s going on with him?” she asks.

Cella sighs and looks back at Robb. “I’ll tell you another time, San,” he murmurs with a slight grimace, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and squeezing her against his side. She sighs but acquiesces?, making him promise to tell her eventually.

* * *

When she says goodbye to Cella at the end of Textiles, she realizes that she doesn’t have plans for the afternoon. She and Joffrey haven’t planned anything, Margaery is working on Joffrey, and Cella is at the library with Robb. A smile breaks across her face; it’s been so long since she had an afternoon to herself that it feels like a rare, precious gift.

“Have a lovely afternoon, Sansa,” Septa Mordane calls after her as she leaves the room.

Sansa looks back, waves, smiles. “You too!”

And then she smacks into someone. Someone who grabs her arms in a tight - punishing - grip. “Where were you at lunch?” Joffrey asks, hissing the words in her ear.

“I- I thought you would want a day to talk to your friends without me,” she tells him. “I sat with Robb.”

“And who else?” Joffrey growls, hands leaving her arms; he grasps her wrist and tows her along, not pausing long enough to let her catch her breath so she can answer him, though she wants to ask why he’s here with her instead of with Margaery, as planned - and then she realizes that she only knows about his plans with Margaery _because_ of Margaery, so she can’t ask without making him suspicious.

He practically drags her to his car, and every time she opens her mouth to try to speak, to explain, he glares her into silence. Finally, once they reach his house and he has dragged her up the stairs to his room, he repeats the question.

“Who else did you sit with at lunch?” he demands.

“Cella,” she replies.”

“And?” He is glaring at her, completely furious.

“And Jon,” she replies in a small voice. “Joffrey, I didn’t even _talk_ to h-” Her words are cut off by the swift blow to her face. She gasps and falls backwards onto the low couch at the foot of his bed. “Joff-”

“Shut up!” he snarls. “I _told_ you that I don’t want you around him, Sansa! I don’t trust him around you!”

She just blinks up at him silently, making her limbs go slack instead of staying tensed. She wants him to believe he’s beaten her, that he’s won. He won’t hurt her again if he thinks she won’t fight at all. The times when she’s started crying, he’s only looked at her in disgust, so she ducks her chin, pulls her knees into her chest, and starts to sob, softly at first, but getting louder and louder, until she hears a knock at Joffrey’s door.

“Joffrey?” the voice of his little brother Tommen calls. “Are you all right? It sounds like you’re crying.”

“Not a word,” Joffrey hisses at her as he goes to the door and yanks it open. “You thought _I_ was crying, Tommen? What are you, four? Sansa’s the one who’s crying.” He looks back at her with disgust in his eyes again, but blocks the doorway when Tommen tries to enter.

“Are you all right, Sansa?” Tommen asks her. She knows Joffrey is horrible to her, and she should have listened to Cella when _she_ said he was horrible, so it’s not such a leap to imagine that Joffrey has bullied Tommen as well. And if he has, it’s so brave of Tommen to come to Joffrey’s door and ask about her that it brings on a fresh wave of tears - real ones this time.

“She’s fine,” Joffrey snaps.

Tommen doesn’t look at his brother when he says, “I asked Sansa, not you,” and Sansa thinks he must be the bravest, kindest person she knows.

“I’m fine, Tommen,” she tells him. “I’ve just had a hard day. Thank you for asking, though.”

Tommen nods solemnly at her and turns to leave. When he’s gone, Joffrey slams the door shut and glares at her. “What was that?” he demands.

“He wasn’t going to go away unless I said something,” she tells him dully. “I was just trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help,” Joffrey snarls. When she doesn’t say anything, just sniffles and ducks her head, resting it on her knees, he makes a noise of disgust and says, “Ugh, just go home. What a waste of time.”

She uncurls from herself, standing slowly, and crosses the room, eyeing Joffrey gingerly as she picks up her backpack and leaves. To her surprise, he says nothing as she leaves - doesn’t call her back, doesn’t insult her or her family, doesn’t say anything at all.

The front door closing behind her makes her shiver, and she realizes that she doesn’t have a way to get home other than walking. Obviously Joffrey won’t be driving her, Margaery is probably busy, since Joffrey wasn’t distracted by her, and she wouldn’t interrupt Robb and Cella’s study date for anything. It’s cold, but she’ll just have to walk home.

It takes her almost an hour to get home, and the house is quiet when she walks in. Robb is with Cella, and Mum will be at Arya’s fencing practice with Bran and Rickon. Dad doesn’t get home from work until late on Thursdays, so she’s all alone in the house, which is a relief. She doesn’t know if she could handle seeing someone else right now. Dropping her backpack by the stairs, she walks into the kitchen, deciding to make herself a pot of tea. She could do with something soothing just-

“Sansa?” The voice makes her jump and scream, though she wants to sink through the floor when she realizes it’s Jon.

“Gods, Jon,” she mutters. “Warn a girl.” And then she frowns. “Wait, why are you here? Robb is with Cella at the library.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “My mum is at home.” Just when she’s about to ask why he isn’t with her - it’s rare for his mother to not be working at this time in the afternoon, and she knows he treasures all the time he gets to spend with her - he makes a face and adds, “With Robert.”

“Oh,” she mutters. “Um, sorry?” Passing him to reach the kettle on the stove, she fills it and turns on the burner. “Want some tea? I was about to make a pot.”

“Sansa, what happened to your face?” he asks, lifting a hand to her cheek, brushing her skin with light fingertips.

She tries her best not to flinch away from him, but the hurt he can’t quite hide in his eyes makes it clear that she didn’t manage it. Her surprise at his question, though, drops her verbal defenses, and she’s less careful with her speech than she should be. “Oh, he managed to leave a bruise this time?” she asks, a little interested despite herself. The previous times Joffrey’s hit her weren’t exactly light taps, but she doesn’t bruise _very_ easily, and they weren’t the hardest hits she’s ever had - those were from Arya, over some childhood slight.

Jon’s eyes go hard, and she realizes what a horrible mistake she’s made. “Were you with Joffrey?” he asks tightly. She presses her lips together and turns away from him, going to rummage through the cupboard for a bag of tea. “Sansa?”

With a sigh, she says, “Yes, Jon, I was with Joffrey. And yes, he hit me.” Jon looks _livid_ , his face turning redder and redder as he flexes his hands into fists.

“I’ll kill him,” he snarls. “Gods, I’ll fucking _kill_ that little bastard!” He wheels around and makes to stalk out of the kitchen, sending her eyes wide. He can’t go; he can’t do anything to Joffrey. The whole plan will be ruined if he does.

“Jon, no!” she cries, catching his shoulders in her hands. “You can’t!”

“The fuck I can’t,” he growls. “He _hurt_ you, Sansa!”

“Jon Snow, don’t you _dare_ ,” she says, voice going high and squeaky as she tries not to imagine what could happen if Jon actually goes after Joffrey.

“Why are you defending him, Sansa?” Jon asks, sounding wounded as he turns around again to look at her.

“I’m not,” she says. “Sit down, Jon.” He glares at the floor, but when she does her best approximation of one of her mother’s you-are-going-to-do-what-I-say-and-you-are-going-to-do-it-now expressions, he sits down at the kitchen counter. “I’m not defending him, Jon,” she says tiredly. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”

He snorts. “You think he could hurt me? Sansa, please.”

She narrows her eyes and says, “No, I think he would be smart enough to let you beat him up and then get you sent to jail for it.”

“So you think I’m stupid, is that it?” Jon asks in a growl.

“Are you even listening to me?” she demands. “That is _not_ what I said!” Huffing in annoyance, she continues, “You know how I’ve been spending so much time with Margaery Tyrell recently?”

Jon frowns. “I think I remember talking to you about it, so yeah.”

“Well, you know how you alluded to them sleeping together when you came to pick me up?” she asks. “You were right - they did sleep together that evening.”

“I fucking _knew_ it!” Jon hits the table. “That little weasel!”

“But I was right, too,” Sansa continues, louder. “Because I said that Margaery _would never go behind my back_ and do that.”

“What are you saying?”

Sansa rolls her eyes. “Margaery and I planned for them to sleep together. She’s seducing him for me.”

“What?” There’s an expression that hovers between disgust and interest on his face.

“Marg is getting him to break up with me to be with her,” she explains. “She’s helping me.”

Jon scoffs. “That girl never does anything that won’t benefit her in some way.”

“I didn’t say that Margaery’s only motivation was helping me,” Sansa says primly. “She has her reasons.”

“Which are?” Jon asks expectantly.

Tossing her hair, Sansa says, “Her own.”

Jon’s jaw clenches. “Sansa…”

“It’s not up to me to tell you things that Margaery told me in confidence,” she says. “I trust her, and that should be enough for you.”

He looks mulish, but eventually sighs and asks, “When did this whole thing with her start?”

“Oh, a while ago,” she says offhandedly as she turns back to making herself a cup of tea. “Are you sure you don’t want some tea, Jon? I could make a pot.”

“Sure, why not,” he replies, dropping into a seat at the kitchen counter. “ _How_ did it start?”

“Margaery noticed that he was being emotionally abusive,” Sansa tells him, slipping a quick glance at the clock - still early enough that no one will be home for (hopefully) long enough for her to tell Jon enough to satisfy him.

“He was what?” Jon’s voice cracks and he stares at her with wide eyes.

“She noticed the signs,” Sansa says gently. “I was spending less time with Cella and Robb and you, I was less confident… She and her grandmother have been really helpful with helping me recover from this, Jon. Most of the way I act around Joffrey now is an act. Anyways, she approached me in the bathroom during Choir one day and offered to help me get rid of him.” Eyes rolling, she says, “Fool that I was, I told her that I loved him and to leave me alone. She approached me again a few weeks later, and by that point, he’d hit me for the first time, so I said yes.”

“Did you?” Jon asks, seeming a little distracted - and almost distressed.

Frowning, she says, “Did I what, Jon? Say yes? Obviously I did, other-”

“No,” he says, “did you love him?”

She snorts. “Gods, no. Jon, I’m fourteen, and he was emotionally abusing me, making me think that he cared about me when really he didn’t. It’s not like I’ve had…” Sighing, she just repeats, “No, I didn’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from 'Born in Chains'  
> So... now Jon knows. What do you think he'll do about it?  
> (Also - I seriously considered saying 'Jon has a bitch fit' in the chapter summary - do you think I should go back and change it?)  
> Thanks so much for reading this!! I'm still amazed at how many people are reading this. *happy wiggles*


	15. the burden it was raised

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joffrey and Sansa have a much-awaited talk.

Margaery’s been telling her that he’s close to breaking up with her for a week and a half, now, and she’s antsy, impatient for it to be done and dusted and behind her. She’s ready to leave this whole sorry episode of her life in the past.

So when Joffrey texts her, saying _We need to talk_ , she grins.

Sansa:

_Yeah, what’s up?_

_When would be good?_

_I’m free now, if you want me to come over…_

Joffrey:

_Now is good._

She calls down the stairs, “Hey, Robb?”

“Yeah, what is it, wolflet?” he calls back up.

“Can you drive me over to Joffrey’s?” she asks, waiting for his reluctant affirmative reply to shove a few things into her favorite purse, a bright blue hand-woven thing from somewhere in Essos — it’s one she knows Joffrey hates, so she’s barely used it in the last several months, and each thing she puts in it makes her feel a little more like she’s taking something back from him.

Robb is quiet on the drive over, but when they reach the Baratheons’, he says, “Call me if you need anything, OK?”

She nods, though she already knows that Margaery will be picking her up from this. “I’ll see you later, Robby,” she says sweetly, leaning over and kissing his cheek.

While she’s thinking about Marg, she sends off a quick text: _It’s happening!_ She gets several excited smiley faces in reply and grins as she knocks on the door.

“Hi,” Joffrey says shortly when he lets her in. She starts on her way up to his room, but he diverts her into one of the ground-floor rooms with carefully-arranged couches — of which the Baratheons have several — another hint that he’s about to dump her.

It’s so hard to keep her excitement out of her eyes, because she can hardly wait to be free of him, but she has to keep her expression neutral, wearied. “What’s up, Joff?” she asks. “What did you want to talk about?”

He makes a face and falters, grasping for words. She waits for several long moments with an anxious look on her face that becomes less fake with each passing second. What if he’s _not_ breaking up with her?

“I don’t think this is working,” he finally spits out, and it is all she can do to keep the _thank gods_ that wants to erupt from her throat silent.

“What?” she says, keeping her voice faint, confused, a little hurt. “Joff, what do you mean?”

“I mean, this isn’t working,” he says. “Us. I don’t think we should be in a relationship any longer.”

“Oh,” she breathes, biting the inside of her lip, _hard_ , to bring tears to her eyes. “Oh.” She swallows, trying for convulsive. “Oh,” she repeats, pulling her arms around herself, hunching a little. “Do you want- Should I- I’ll just- um. Should I go?”

“Yes,” he says, looking disgusted again. “Gods, you’re stupid. I _clearly_ don’t want you here.”

She jumps up, bringing a hand to her mouth to disguise a victorious noise as one of despair, and hurries from the house, letting the door slam behind her. As soon as she’s out of sight of the house, their tall, thick hedges forming a screen she is sure Joffrey can’t see her through, she lets the wide grin she’s been suppressing split her face. “Yes!” she squeaks, keeping her jubilant cry as quiet as possible.

Pulling out her phone, she calls Margaery. “Hi sweetie,” the older girl says, and her voice — hovering somewhere between excited and sympathetic — makes Sansa burst out into real tears. “Are you right by his house?” Margaery asks.

“Yeah,” she sobs. “I am.”

“I’ll be right there to get you, sweet girl.” Though she doesn’t say any more, Margaery remains on the line, the sound of her breathing calming Sansa as she waits for the older girl to pick her up.

* * *

Olenna has tea and cakes waiting for them when they get back to the house, having swung by the library to pick up Cella, too.

“Congratulations,” Olenna says dryly when the trio of girls walks in the front door. “Well rid of the little fool, are you?”

Sansa nods enthusiastically, grins widely, says, “Thank all the gods — old and new.”

Olenna inclines her head and turns, leads them to the tea table, which has Sansa’s lemon cakes, Cella’s strawberry tarts, and the frangipane tarts that Margaery, she has discovered, is fond of. “Thank you, Grandmother,” Margaery says with a wide smile. “Let’s toast to Sansa’s escaping Joffrey’s clutches!”

They all sit, and Olenna waves for her granddaughter to pour. “To being rid of my pestilential brother,” Cella says gleefully, lifting her teacup.

Mimicking her, the rest of them say, “To being rid of Joffrey,” smiling at each other — Sansa with relief, Margaery with pride, Olenna with amusement.

“So are you going to do anything about Jon?” Cella asks, just shy of Sansa’s swallowing her tea; it makes her sputter and do her best to avoid spitting the tea all over Olenna’s pristine rose-patterned tablecloth.

“Am I going to do anything about Jon?” she repeats. “Why would I? And certainly not so quickly. Much as I despise Joffrey, I do still have some sense — and besides, wasn’t the plan to wait until he’s, you know…” she waves a hand to avoid saying the word they must all be thinking — _dead_.

Cella sighs dramatically. “Can you blame me for wanting Jon to be happy?” she asks, a plaintive note in her tone.

“No,” Margaery replies for Sansa, “but she’s right about having sense and waiting. Besides, it’s tacky to start dating another person as soon as you break up with the first.”

“Which is why you’re making Joff wait a few weeks before you two announce your relationship,” Sansa says, a laughing light in her eyes.

“Exactly,” Margaery says. “It’s just handy — for both you and us — that two of those weeks are the holiday break. You don’t have to spend more than the next few days looking heartbroken, and I can” — she rolls her eyes — “endure Joffrey’s attentions as much as he wants without having to worry about anyone saying anything. I’ll just hold him off until the end of the first week back to announce our relationship.”

Sansa snorts. “I’m sure you’re heartbroken, having to wait,” she says, lips curling, though she makes an attempt at suppressing the smile.

“Oh, _very_ ,” Margaery assures her, laying a hand lightly on her chest.

Once the tea is drunk and the sweets nibbled up, Olenna gestures for a fresh pot to be brought forth; as soon as Sansa takes a sip, she realizes that more serious matters are about to be discussed — the tea is the smoky blend Olenna has used for all of their planning meetings.

“How are you planning to do it?” Cella asks, looking at Margaery.

The plan she outlines is an audacious one, and parts of it sound so far-fetched that they make Sansa laugh — but Cella’s face stays hard through the whole explanation, and she just nods at the end of it.

“It’s a good plan,” she says. “I think the gumball part of it is especially genius — although not without risk.”

Margaery shrugs. “What’s life without a little risk?” she asks with a smirk. “I’m obviously not going to test it, but I’ve found some gumballs large enough that they should work.” A wry smile twists her lips. “Anyways, I should probably get you girls back home.”

“Oh, just take me to Sansa’s,” Cella says. “I should be with her tonight — I don’t think I could bear to look at Joffrey just now, and besides, I want to watch Robb and Jon’s reactions to the news.”

Sansa smiles lazily. “I am looking forward to those,” she admits. “Although I’ll have to hide my happiness about the breakup from them, which is just annoying.”

Cella’s lips twitch. “This is going to be _hilarious_.” To Margaery, she adds, “I’ll fill you in with a play-by-play via text.”

The older girl grins wide.

* * *

At the door, the two girls exchange a look and school their faces. Sansa rubs at her eyes to make them redder and gives a very convincing sniffle. Cella grins one last time and opens the door, patting Sansa’s shoulder.

“It’s OK, Sans,” she says, affecting her best slightly-helpless expression. “It’s not the end of the world.”

Sansa sobs loudly, and the sound brings the entire household down on their heads at once — or so it seems. Robb and Jon are there first, both looking concerned, though the latter also has a helpless expression that makes Cella want to go and pat _his_ shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” Robb asks.

“It’s _Joffrey_ ,” Sansa sobs, not saying anything more. Cella watches as rage lights in Jon’s eyes before he frowns in confusion and schools himself.

“What’s that rat done to you?” Robb demands, taking Sansa’s shoulders in his hands.

Sansa just sobs again, and Robb looks to Cella for an explanation just as the Stark parents arrive on the scene, Arya and Bran close behind them. “Joffrey broke up with her,” Cella says quietly, looking soberly around at the gathered family. “Margaery picked us up and we had some ice cream at hers, but…” She grimaces and shakes her head, noting with amusement that Arya looks _thrilled_.

Robb and Jon exchange a look — relieved on one side, slightly elated on the other — and Sansa will have to tell her what _that’s_ about, why Jon looks so thrilled about it. As glad as she’s sure he is right now, she also knows that he wouldn’t be _elated_ about Sansa’s (presumably) broken heart. Ned and Catelyn are _also_ exchanging a look — slightly-confused on both counts, with agitated on Catelyn’s side and uneasy on Ned’s. Cella slides her phone out and taps out a few texts to Margaery, the report she promised.

Arya has grabbed Bran and is jumping up and down with _joy_. “Finally!” she cries. “Gods, Sansa, I thought you’d never be rid of him!”

“Arya!” Catelyn chides. “I know you dislike Joffrey, but this is not the time; at least _try_ to be sensitive, please.”

Sansa, however, chuckles wetly and smiles at Arya. “It’s OK, mum,” she says. “Arya means well.” She holds a hand out to her little sister and waits for Arya to take it — several moments that have Sansa holding her breath in hope — so she can pull her into a hug. With a kiss to the side of Arya’s head, she lets her go; Arya makes way for Robb, who wraps his arms tightly around Sansa and sways her back and forth gently.

Cella and Jon exchange a look. She smiles at the thought of an older brother who is all an older brother should be — all that Joffrey is not, all that Jon _is_.

“It’ll be all right, wolflet,” she hears Robb whispering to Sansa, cheek pressed against her temple. “You’ll be all right.” (Later, in her room, Sansa will tell Cella how relaxing it was to sink into her brother’s embrace — and also how his words made her want to roll her eyes. _Of course_ she’ll be all right, she tells Cella; she’s well rid of Joffrey, and it’s a relief for absolutely everyone.) Now, though, Cella watches Sansa nuzzle closer into Robb’s chest and feels a peace descend on her that she hasn’t felt since near the beginning of the year. It’s a feeling she’s always gotten, watching Robb and Sansa — there is something so _right_ about their relationship.

Jon sidles up next to her and nudges her elbow with his. They haven’t yet told the Starks about what his mother told them — about how she said they should have been brother and sister, about how her father and his mother are slowly sinking back into the friendship they lost, over eighteen years ago. So Ned and Catelyn might think it was a little strange for Jon to drape his arm over her shoulders like he’s begun doing when they’re having coffee at his house after school, for Cella to rest her head on his shoulder the way they both love.

She realizes, then — “Does Robb know?” she asks in a whisper, glancing up at Jon, who is gazing at the still-embracing pair with a soft look in his eyes.

“Hmm- what?” he replies, tearing his eyes away from them only slowly, like it causes him physical pain.

“About what your mum said? About… you know, us?” She drops her voice even more, not wanting to be overheard by the crowd of Starks. “Have you told him?”

“We’ll discuss it later, all right?” he mutters. “Not here.”

She nods; it’s a fair point — this is not the best setting for a discussion of secrets. They will have to return to the issue later.

Sansa is embraced by mother, father, and both younger brothers before Catelyn herds them all to the table, where a warm dinner of hearty stew and dense, freshly-baked bread awaits them. The dinner conversation is carefully light, and just when Catelyn looks to be about to bring up Joffrey and the breakup — as the boys and Ned clear the table — Sansa asks, “Mummy, can Cella stay the night? Please? She can borrow some of my clothes for tomorrow.”

Catelyn sighs and looks to Cella. “It’s up to you, Myrcella,” she says with a shrug. “We will never mind you staying over.”

“I think it would be a good idea,” she tells Sansa’s mother. “I have everything I need for school, anyways — I was at the library, studying, when Marg and Sansa came and grabbed me.”

“And Margaery was helpful?” Catelyn asks carefully.

Sansa nods. “She was wonderful. She said lots of stuff — told me about the breakups she’s had, and how she got through them.”

Snorting, Cella adds, “Well, the ice cream probably helped a bit, too.”

“Indeed,” Catelyn says dryly. “A balm for all emotional wounds.”

Sansa tugs at Cella’s hand. “Let’s go upstairs,” she says. “I just want to sleep.”

“All right, darling,” her mother murmurs, standing and coming around the table to where Sansa and Cella sit, kissing the crown of Sansa’s head. “Your brother will drive you in the morning, all right?”

“It’s not like Joffrey will be vying to drive me to school anymore,” Sansa says with a snort. “The rat.”

Anger and name-calling are acceptable behavior for the newly-broken up, Margaery told her, so she can at least express her dislike of Joffrey, though not her joy at being — _finally_ — rid of him.

She tugs Cella up the stairs and pulls her into her room. “Come on,” she says. “I really do just want to sleep; I’m exhausted from faking being devastated.”

A knock sounds at the door. “It’s Robb,” her brother calls. “Can I come in?”

“Just a minute!” she replies. “We’re changing!”

Cella glares at her, but she just tosses an oversize sweater of Robb’s that she, admittedly, _had_ kind of planned on wearing — but he’ll love seeing it on Cella, she knows, so it’s not too much of a difficulty to give it up. Besides, she has a sweater of her dad’s that he got rid of last week — it went in the give-away pile, but Sansa stole it. It’s too soft to resist, and it smells of her dad. Yanking on a pair of leggings, she grins at Cella, who is struggling with her skinny jeans.

“It’ll be another minute, Robb,” Sansa calls, grinning at Cella. “Cella’s having some trouble with her jeans…”

“Sansa!” she hisses, making a furious face at her best friend — who she knows is really just teasing her brother.

“Jon said he had something he wanted to talk about, by the way,” Robb says through the door. “Is it OK if he comes in, too?”

“Sure,” Sansa replies, waiting until Cella’s leggings are fully on before opening the door. “What’s up, Jon?”

His feet shuffle. “There’s something I have to tell you both,” he says, looking at Sansa and Robb. “Something _we_ have to tell you.” He gestures at Cella, including her in the statement.

“Sansa already knows, Jon,” she says quietly. “I told her the day after.”

Robb has bypassed curious and gone straight for alarmed. His eyes dart between her and Jon, narrowing in suspicion. “What’s going on?” he demands.

Jon, however, is staring at Cella. “You _told_ her?” he says, voice tight. “And you didn’t tell me that you told her?”

“I thought she should know,” Cella tells him. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

Sansa, who has been sitting quietly on a corner of her bed, rolls her eyes _loudly_ — as loudly as eyes can be rolled, that is — and says to Robb, “They’re siblings.” Brows furrowing, she amends, “Well, not technically. But they should have been.”

“My father,” Cella adds, “has been in love with your Aunt Lyanna since they were kids. He used to tell me about her when I was little.”

“They only just re-connected,” Jon says, “because-”

“Because my _mother_ ,” Cella snarls, “is a _bitch_.”

Robb frowns. “What do you mean?”

Cella’s hands are clenched into fists as she fumes; Jon says, “She made Cella’s dad think my mum was dead… or something. It’s not entirely clear — but as soon as he found out that she lives up here, he made the move for school permanent. Sold their house in King’s Landing and everything.”

“Mother and Joffrey had _fits_ when he told them that,” Cella says gleefully. “Serves them bloody right.”

Robb still looks confused, but Sansa reaches out and takes his hand, squeezes it — and pulls Cella to sit beside her on the bed with her other arm. “I want to sleep,” she tells her brother bluntly. “You and Jon can talk more about this in your room.”

Robb nods, kisses her forehead, and leaves; Jon lingers for a moment, looking at Sansa. “I’m glad you and Joffrey are done,” he tells her.

“So am I,” she says. “Good night, Jon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from 'Born in Chains'  
> Hooray!!! Joffrey and Sansa are done!!! (Big sigh of relief)  
> He's still got bad things coming his way, though.


	16. i listened to their story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cella and Jon have a family outing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is super fluffy… Hope you enjoy it! (If Lyabert is your notp, you may want to skip this one.) There’s a little bit of feels, too, I hope! (I personally love Lyabert, so this makes my heart nice and toasty warm.)

She wakes to a knocking on her door. “What?” she mutters, and then, louder, “Come in!”

Her father pokes his head through the door. “Myrcella,” he says fondly. “Good morning.”

Grinning, she bounces out of bed and races across the room to hug her father. “Good morning, Dad,” she says. “Are we still going skating?” She’s been looking forward to the outing since her father told her of it - they’re going to meet Lyanna and Jon at the skating rink and spend the day together. She knows that Father and Lyanna are… courting, in some strange way, though Jon has told her of overheard conversations indicating that Lyanna won’t do anything of a romantic nature with Father while he’s still married. (Which is perfectly understandable, in Cella’s estimation, given her history with Jon’s father.) This is a sort of compromise - and it’s what might have, in a different life, been a family outing. The thought makes her eyes sting, and she hugs Father tighter.

“Get dressed,” he says, patting her back, gentle hands at odds with his gruff voice. “I want to leave before your mother wakes.”

Mother always sleeps in until noon on weekends, so she’s not too worried about that - but Joffrey might say something to Mother about her and Father going somewhere together (and he’s been avoiding them all in the long months since they moved North), and Joff will be up soon. “All right,” she says, grinning up at him and rising on tiptoes to kiss his whiskered cheek. “I’m glad we’re doing this, Dad.” (Calling him that still feels so new - he only just asked her to call him that, instead of Father, which is still how she thinks of him.)

He nods at her, expression still gruff, and leaves her to dress.

Bundled in leggings under jeans, thermal shirt under woolen sweater, and cozy hat, she meets Father by the car. “Ready?” he asks, eyes alight with excitement and anticipation, more than she’s ever seen there.

“Absolutely,” she replies.

The car is quiet on the way to the skating rink, and when they get there, Father pulls out a bag with both of their skates from the backseat. When they sit to put the skates on, she goggles at him.

“Dad, those are _ancient_!” she giggles, lacing her own skates easily. “When did you _get_ them?”

He chuckles, shrugs. “Probably the last time I was up North,” he says, referencing his school years, before Lyanna disappeared, before he left for King’s Landing and never came back. Shaking her head at him, rolling her eyes, she almost misses the way he looks over at the rink, where Jon and Lyanna are already on the ice. “This is what it should have been like,” Father says quietly - under his breath, so low she _knows_ she wasn’t meant to hear.

She swallows back the tears that rise - she’s had years to get used to the animosity between Father and Mother; her tears now are for the life he’s imagining, the life she, too, wishes they’d had. A life with Jon as her brother, not Joff, a life full of laughter and love, not slammed doors and spiteful glares.

“Cella!” she hears Jon call. Grinning, she stands in her skates and crosses to the ice, removing her blade covers and setting them on the shelf by the rink entrance. Jon meets her there, a matching grin on his face. “How was your morning?”

“It’s barely begun,” she replies, widening her eyes at him. “How long have you been here?”

“We got here probably ten minutes before you did,” he tells her. “I think Mum and I have been on the ice for maybe two, three minutes.”

“Oh, good,” she grins. “You’ve not got too much of a head start on me, then.” She pushes onto the ice and wobbles for a second before Jon steadies her. “Thanks.” (It’s been a while since she skated, OK? Probably over a year.)

Looking past Jon, she sees Lyanna in the center of the ice, skating backwards into a twirl, eyes closed, a peaceful look on her face. As she and Jon begin to make their way around the rink, they watch her father skate over to meet Lyanna, a soft look (one she’s never seen directed at her mother) on his face.

Motioning Jon over to the side of the rink, she whispers to him, “Dad said — well, he said it under his breath, not to me — he said that this is what it should have been like.”

A wistful expression crosses Jon’s face, and she knows that he, too, is picturing it — picturing a childhood with parents who love each other, actually having a father, not being an only child (and a bastard, besides, though none of the Starks, or Cella, holds that against him).

“Would we have come here a lot?” she asks, skating behind Jon and propping her chin on his shoulder, watching their parents skate together. It looks so natural that she knows they must have skated together as teenagers, maybe even competed. But Father is no longer as strong as he was when they were all teenagers together, and she knows Lyanna must have changed, too.

“Yeah,” Jon says, sounding a little choked up; she feels tears well in her own eyes in response. “Yeah, we would have.”

“And you would have helped me learn to skate?” She puts her hands on the caps of his shoulders.

Jon huffs a laugh so quiet she feels more than hears it. “Yeah. You would’ve been maybe three, two and a half - with the way your dad and my mum skate together, you probably would have skated before you really learned to walk.”

She’s the one laughing this time, at the mental image of a six-year-old Jon leading a three-year-old Cella around on the ice. “That would have been nice,” she says, and to push away the tears that begin to sting her eyes, she pushes away from the edge of the rink and skates several feet before shouting back to Jon, “Race you around the rink!”

“Cheater!” he cries back, shooting forward from pushing off the wall, though more fondness than frustration is in his voice. “I’ll get you!”

She shrieks with glee (and, OK, a little bit of fright) and does her best to skate faster, but Jon has more experience — and stronger legs — so he comes out the victor, though he pulls her into a hug as she makes to skate past him.

“Can you skate backwards?” her almost-brother asks, the light of an idea in his eyes.

She waves a hand back and forth. “Kind of.”

“Alright, I’ll do the backwards part,” Jon says, and tows her by the hands as he begins to skate backwards. She lets him do the work for a second, then starts skating, too.

He pulls her through complicated twists and turns, and she keeps her body loose, allowing him to guide her movements. The last twist pulls her right up against his chest, and she wraps her arms around his torso, having felt his grip on her hand loosen.

Throwing her head back, she laughs with delight, and Jon’s warm laughter joins hers - and then, so do her father’s and Lyanna’s. “That was really fun,” she says with a crinkly-eyed smile up at the boy she wishes was her brother. “And now I want hot chocolate.”

Her words make him laugh again, and she wrinkles her nose at him and skates away, heading for the edge of the ice and her blade covers. When she has those on, she beckons Jon over with an impatient look, making their parents laugh again. Jon walks her over to the counter that has hot drinks — coffee, tea, hot chocolate — free for anyone who’s paid entrance to the rink. “Here you are, Miss Myrcella,” Jon says as he passes her a cup of hot chocolate with a flourish. For himself, he takes a mixture that is mostly hot chocolate with a little bit of coffee splashed in at the top.

“Thank you, kind sir,” she replies with the most graceful curtsy she can manage with skates on (and off the ice). They find a bench at the edge of the ice and sit together, watching her father and his mother skate together. “Gods, it’s so beautiful,” she breathes, watching them; Jon wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her into his side.

“It is,” he agrees, voice soft.

 

When they finish their hot chocolates, she and Jon head back out onto the ice, determined to enjoy every moment of this that they can. Soon, though, Jon’s mother has to leave for her job, and her father isn’t quite as happy after that, though the soft expression on his face lingers. He’s agreed to drive Jon home, he says, so they can stay as long as they want.

He skates beside her for a while, then leaves the ice with a smile for her that has the usual melancholy edge - the same smile he’s had for her all her life.

Later, on her way back from the bathroom, she hears her father’s voice. “-anna, wait,” he’s saying. “At least-” He stops for a long moment, and she can almost picture the way his eyes are rolling. “Lyanna, it’s only ever been you,” her father says - heavily, like he knows it won’t make a difference - “you know that.”

He stops again, and Cella takes a quiet breath. She doesn’t exactly want to eavesdrop on her father’s conversation with Lyanna, but she doesn’t want to walk past him, either, and he’s in the only way back to the ice that doesn’t involve spiderwebs.

“Yes, you’ve _told_ me that!” Father almost snaps. “Lya- Lya, just let me say what I called you for, for fuck’s sake.” Another pause, and then he says, “Yes, I’m aware you don’t like me swearing, Lya,” in the most indulgent tone she’s ever heard from him. “Lya,” he says, “if that’s your condition, then I’ll divorce her. I don’t love her; I’ve never loved her. She was just… there, and her father pushed for the match.”

He snorts at whatever Lyanna says then.

“Lya, _please_.” His voice sounds more strained, more near tears, than she’s heard _ever_. “Lya- Lyanna, I love you.” Another pause, and then, “I guess that’s all I can ask. Thank you, Lya.”

There’s the quiet beep of an ended call then, and she presses her lips together tightly. Father cannot find out that she heard this call. No one can find out that she heard this call. If- if- She quiets the thoughts running wild through her mind and listens for Father’s footsteps to fade away.

She ducks back into the bathroom to splash some water on her face; if she goes back out _now_ , both Jon and Father will be able to tell - Jon at least that _something_ happened, and Father _what_ happened. She can’t have that. Staring into her reflection, she takes several deep breaths, trying to calm her racing heart and soothe her antsy stomach. Her face is paler than usual - too pale to go back out, but what can she do about it?

Eventually, when she’s taken several minutes’ worth of deep breaths, she swallows and heads back out to the ice. Jon waves as she approaches, but as she gets closer to him, his smile changes to a worried frown. “Are you all right, Cella?” he asks, reaching out for her elbow as she slows and stops beside him.

“I’m fine,” she says lightly, but can tell by the furrowing of his brow that he doesn’t quite believe her. She sighs, bites her lip, and fights a smile as an idea occurs to her. “Actually,” she says slowly, feigning nerves (well, mostly feigning - or at least partly, if for the lie rather than its content), “um, I kind of, um… have cramps.” She avoids his eyes, blushing slightly, knowing how little Joffrey likes hearing about her moonblood.

“ _Oh_ ,” Jon says, and when she looks up at him, he is blushing, too. “Um, do you… need anything?”

“It’s, um-” She pauses, not sure what to say. “The Starks’ house is near here, right?”

“Yeah,” Jon says, “Winterfell is just a couple blocks from here.” She waits, to see if he’ll suggest it, so she doesn’t have to. “Would- I’m sure we could stop there on your way home?”

It’s not difficult to flush a darker pink. “I… kind of don’t want to tell my dad?” she says - mostly because it is a lie, and if they stopped at the Starks’ to get pads or Tylenol or whatever, she’d have to tell Sansa, who knows that she had her period the week before last. “Do you think we could just spend some time at Winterfell and have Robb or someone drive us home? Or- I mean, I don’t think Father minds me having sleepovers with Sansa anywhere near as much as Mum does, so I could just ask him in the car… What do you think?”

Jon opens his mouth, closes it, pauses, opens it again, frowns, and says, “I guess I don’t mind spending the afternoon at Winterfell. And if… it’ll help you, then why not, right?”

Her shoulders relax, and she sighs happily. “Exactly.”

She finds her dad, who is sitting on one of the benches, staring at something on his phone screen; she wonders if it’s texts from Lyanna (or to her). “Hey, princess,” her father says. “What’s up?”

“Jon and I were wondering if you could drop us off at the Starks’ for the afternoon?” she says, smiling winningly at him. “And I was maybe thinking - if it’s OK with her parents, of course! - that I could have a sleepover with Sansa tonight?”

With a rumbling laugh, Father says, “Of course I can do that!”

“Great! Thanks, Dad,” she says. “Um, we’re ready to be done… are you…?” He still has his skates laced up, she notices, though he hasn’t been back on the ice since skating with her, and that was well over an hour ago.

“Oh, yes, all done.” He smiles a little ruefully at her. “I thought I might head back out, but - little as I like to admit it - I guess I’m getting old.”

With a giggle, she says, “Never, Dad!” and sits to unlace her skates, waving Jon over as she does. He takes a seat on her other side to unlace his own skates, and Father nods over at him.

“You know you can always ask for anything,” Father says to Jon. “I- Well, I suppose I’m not sure, but I think you’re named for my uncle, who took care of my brothers and I when we were kids.” A distant look enters his eyes. “He adored Lyanna - she was over all the time when we were kids - just as often as we were over at Winterfell, really.”

“I didn’t know that,” Jon says. “I’ll have to ask my mum.”

Father nods, and once they all have skates unlaced, it’s time to go. “I’ll just drop your skates in your room, princess,” Father says as she and Jon pile into the car, their skate bags all on the floor of the backseat.

“Thanks, Dad,” she says, leaning over and smacking a kiss to his cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from 'Almost Like the Blues'  
> Sorry I've been away for so long! I gave up fanfiction for Lent (including writing it), and then at the end of Lent there were just a few weeks of school left, so I kept not reading or writing fic until the end of the school year, and then it took me a couple weeks to get up the oomph to do this. I hope you like it! Please leave me a comment with your thoughts :D


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